Some of these names appear to include suffixes:[6][7] In the 4th century, Baekje, the Gaya confederacy and Silla arose from Mahan, Byeonhan and Jinhan respectively.

Most of these materials come from Silla, whose language is generally believed to be ancestral to all extant Korean varieties as a result of the Sillan unification of most of the peninsula in the late 7th century.

[21] The issue is politically charged in Korea, with scholars who point out differences being accused by nationalists of trying to "divide the homeland".

[22] Based on the account of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Lee Ki-Moon divided the languages spoken on the Korean peninsula at that time into Puyŏ and Han groups.

[23] Lee originally proposed that these were two branches of a Koreanic language family, a view that was widely adopted by scholars in Korea.