님

Etymology
from, transcribed in the eighth-century Japanese history  as 🇨🇬 and variants.

Per the Japanese sources, the original meaning of the word was "lord; ruler"; thus Middle Korean and  are almost certainly related. The semantic shift from "ruler" to "beloved" is also found in.

The development of a noun for "lord" into an honorific marker is also common; see, for instance,. The development of the Internet slang pronoun arises from speakers adding -nim to the usernames of anonymous addressees in polite speech, leading to nim becoming used as a generic second-person pronoun.

Suffix

 * 1)  esteemed; Mr., Ms., Mrs.

Usage notes
is more respectful than, another suffix equivalent to English "Mr.; Ms." This term is affixed to many kinship terms to make them honorific, often to refer to family members other than one's own.

This term is also the honorific used by the South Korean president since, which replaced the previous

Noun

 * 1)  beloved
 * 2)  lord
 * 1)  lord

Usage notes
The prescribed South Korean standard of this word is, following the South Korean sound rule that Early Modern Korean initial is reflected as. But because this word is often encountered in classical works where this rule was not applied, and because of the cultural impact of works using the nim variant such as 's 1926 Nim-ui Chimmuk (The Beloved's Silence) and the 1981 pro-democracy song Nim-eul wihan Haengjingok (Marching Song for the Beloved), the nim variant is actually the more common form.

In North Korea, where the sound rule is not applied, nim is standard prescriptively as well as descriptively.

Pronoun

 * 1)  you

Etymology
From. See 🇨🇬 for more.

Noun

 * 1) lord, master
 * 2) one's love, the beloved
 * 1) one's love, the beloved

Suffix

 * 1) honored; esteemed;