Oppa, Unnie, Hyung and Noona: Why Your Own Gender Picks What You Call Your Idol

When an aespa member called EXO's Suho " " on a show, KTalk explains, the word was about age, not romance. Oppa, unnie, hyung and noona are Korean words for an older sibling: Preply's guide to Korean honorifics translates oppa and hyung as older brother and unnie and noona as older sister, and which one you use depends on your own gender as well as the other person's.

KTalk says that among idols, marks rank in an industry where age hierarchy is everything, signaling respect and warmth at once. One of its examples is IU referring to Bigbang's G-Dragon as " ."

What it means

Preply counts the four words among the most common Korean honorific titles, or (hoching). Wikipedia's entry on Korean honorifics sorts them by meaning: hyeong and oppa both mean "elder brother," nuna and eonni both mean "elder sister," and none of them is reserved for actual relatives.

The catch is that the right word depends on who is talking. kpopfancard.com's guide for fans lays it out:

• A woman calls an older male idol (oppa).
• A woman calls an older female idol (unnie).
• A man calls an older male idol (hyung).
• A man calls an older female idol (noona).

On pronunciation, KTalk writes as "OH-ppa" (IPA [o.p͈a]) and notes that the is a tense consonant.

The spelling varies by source. Preply and kpopfancard.com write oppa, noona, hyung and unnie. Wikipedia and Language Trainers use hyeong, nuna and eonni. The Oxford English Dictionary entry that NPR covered spells it unni, and KoreanClass101 titled its Jan. 3, 2019, guide "Korean Honorific Titles: Oppa, Unni, Hyung, Nuna & more."

The words have relatives. Wikipedia and Language Trainers both define (dongsaeng) as a younger sibling, and kpopfancard.com points fans to (maknae) for a group's youngest member.

Oppa runs warm. Preply says it signals a close bond and trust, turns up more in personal relationships than formal ones and often implies intimacy. On screen, Preply adds, it often carries romance, voicing a heroine's admiration for the male lead.

Unnie runs admiring. Strommeninc's guide calls it a girl's word for an older sister or older female friend, used only between women, and often a way to praise someone she looks up to: a friend, a school senior or a female superstar.

Where it came from

The words started as family vocabulary and spread to everyone else. In an Oct. 12 explainer by Kay Heo, Language Trainers says a woman may call a close older female friend eonni, and a man may call an older male friend hyeong, without anyone pretending they're related. Linguists, it notes, call this extended kinship terminology.

Birth year decides which word applies. Wikipedia says speakers in both South Korea and North Korea, outside very intimate situations, choose honorifics based on whether the other person was born before them, in the same year or after.

Fandom picked the system up and ran with it. Strommeninc says female fans call their favorite male idols oppa to show affection while acknowledging that the idol is older.

KTalk gives three reasons for the habit: emotional positioning that makes the bond feel warm and close, a fandom convention that stuck, and marketing. On that last point, it says entertainment companies encourage the term because it casts male idols as protective, accessible boyfriend figures.

K-dramas gave the word a job in the plot. KTalk says female leads switch to oppa once a relationship turns romantic, and viewers know things just got serious when the heroine stops saying the male lead's name plus .

In the headlines

NPR reported on Oct. 14, 2021, that the Oxford English Dictionary added 26 words tied to Korean culture and revised 11, including oppa and unni. NPR said the revisions reflected how the words' meanings had changed as South Korean culture spread beyond the country.

According to NPR, oppa, long a female speaker's word for an older brother, friend or boyfriend, gained a sense meaning an attractive South Korean man. Unni, a woman's word for an older sister or female friend, gained a sense for anyone of any gender addressing a favorite Korean actress or singer.

The story matters because it put the fandom meanings on the dictionary record. Jieun Kiaer, an associate professor in Korean language and linguistics at the University of Oxford, said the words got in because they are so widely used, NPR reported.

Why it's having a moment

The newest data point comes from kpopfancard.com. In its Oct. 25 guide, it said that across the 28 languages its fan-message translator handles, these four are the words fans struggle with most. The reason, it says, is that hardly any other language fits the speaker's gender and the listener's seniority into one word.

How to use it (and how not to)

Three lines a fan could actually send:

• ", " (Oppa, I always support you), from a female fan to an older male idol, per kpopfancard.com.
• ", " (Noona, you're really cool), from a male fan to an older female idol, per kpopfancard.com.
• " ! !" (That singer is so cool! He's totally my favorite oppa!), an example from Strommeninc.

Now the etiquette.

• Men, skip oppa. KTalk says only women use it, and a man calling an older man oppa sounds wrong to Korean ears. The word he wants is hyung.
• Check the birth year. kpopfancard.com says the older-sibling titles don't apply to a younger idol. Use the idol's name plus (after a consonant) or (after a vowel), or (maknae) for the youngest member.
• People notice when you get it wrong. KTalk says Western fans sometimes call any male idol oppa, even one younger than they are, and that native Koreans notice and have mixed feelings about it.
• When in doubt, leave the title out. kpopfancard.com says a polite line with no honorific, such as " " (I'll always support you), never misfires.