The purpose of this study is to investigate the established way of address terms from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century by listing·typifying the list and to make frame of its function and changes of meaning through historical way. This would be the basic material for building the system of address terms century by century.
1) Followings are address terms consumed century by century.
First, in case of the terms of noun form, ‘name’ form(Sunheeya, Cheolsuya) was used in the early twentieth century, ‘title’ form(daegun, mama sangung, youngam) in the seventeenth century in various ways, common terms(eoreushin, ahjumeoni, seonsaengnim) of addressing relative or title in the sixteenth century.
Second, in case of the terms of pronoun form, only ‘neo, geudui’ existed in the fifteenth century, and ‘janae’ appeared in the sixteenth century. These were remained as ‘neo, geudui, janae’ until the eighteenth century, and ‘dangshin’ was joined to this group. ‘yinyouk’ started to be used in the nineteenth century and 'jagi' was joined recently.
Third, in case of the terms of affix form, ‘seong+ga’ form have been used from the sixteenth century, and ‘-daek’ form and ‘-ne’ form were joined to this group.
2) Followings are the changes of function of address terms in Korean language.
First is the case of transferring from reflexive pronoun such as ‘janae, jagi, dangshin’ to the second personal pronoun. ‘janae’ was functioned as the third personal pronoun in the fifteenth century and transferred as the second personal pronoun in the late sixteenth century, ‘danshin’ and ‘jagi’ appeared as the third personal pronoun in the late sixteenth century and they were changed as the second personal pronoun, the former in the eighteenth century and the latter in recent times.
Second, 'yinyouk' was demonstrative pronoun for 'yijjok', changed as reflexive pronoun in the seventeenth century, and used as the address terms of the second personal pronoun form in the nineteenth century.
3) Followings are the types of transformed meanings.
First is value-degrading and the examples are ‘ne’ and ‘ga’. Above all, ‘nae’ in the fifteenth century meant ‘plural form for honoring’, its meaning weakened from the seventeenth century, was used only as plural form, and used as address terms for female connected to 'children's name' from the nineteenth century, that is, compared to ‘daek’, it became address terms for wives of common people, not in noble class. Therefore, ‘ne’ form had been changed as ‘[+honorification, +plural]> [-honorification, +plural]> [-honorification, -plural]’ and was degraded to ‘[honorification]> [humbleness]’.
‘ga(哥)’ had been used between close friends before the seventeenth century, after that, ‘nom’ the humble form was connected to it and this was degraded. In general, the aspect of calling the family name of the oneself with ‘-ga’ and the family name of others(他姓) with ‘ssi’ could be understood with this background.
Second, ‘-daek’ is the example of weakened meaning. This was used in the seventeenth century and was the honoring terms for 'other families', but recently, it has been connected to place name of female's hometown and used to honor them, only. To be sure, ‘daek’ is a noun and means 'family' and indicates, but compared to ‘ne’, it is only used for female in noble family, so that it would be said the range of using ‘daek’ is weakened as ‘group> individual female’.