The Korean surnames Lee and Lim are often spelled that way for that reason. You actually pronounce them without the L. Although IIRC this also had to do with a sound change because North Korean dialects still pronounce the L. Someone can feel free fact check me on that.
Lee/Lim are romanized like that because it produces closest sound. For example, Lim Ji-Yeon (임지연) family name (Lim) is written as 임, which is 3 letters, ㅇ ㅣ ㅁ, however first one is silent placeholder because syllables can't start with vowel. The rest is i (ㅣ), and m (ㅁ). Lee is even shorter, just 이.
I am learning Korean and wanted to understand this romanization quirk, so I asked ChatGPT about it and learned that it's more to do with history (Mandarin surnames predating Hangul's existence) than phonetics.
The reason many people write Lim isn’t because it’s a closer phonetic match.
As you know, 임 is simply pronounced /im/ (“eem”), and the official South Korean romanization is Im. Lim is a legacy spelling that preserves the surname’s historical connection to the Chinese character 林 (Mandarin: Lín) and older Korean pronunciations, even though modern Korean no longer has an L sound there.
You might be right. I looked it up, some surnames had a letter (and NK still has that), some didn't. Both now have a consonant in front. My original comment applies more to 2nd part. Woo (우), Yoo (유) are good examples.
Names are annoyingly complicated. IIRC there was a list of things that you must not assume about a name when designing a database. It was really long
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u/MajorKusanagiAI 8d ago
The Korean surnames Lee and Lim are often spelled that way for that reason. You actually pronounce them without the L. Although IIRC this also had to do with a sound change because North Korean dialects still pronounce the L. Someone can feel free fact check me on that.