Walking around in Korea, among many other interesting shop names, you will see a lot of names that have the letter “존” in it. But even if you look up the dictionary, you wouldn’t find just the right meaning for what you see in some of the store or product names, other than the meaning of ‘respect’ or ‘existence’, and of course they’re not what 존 means in most sign boards.

Look at the name of this PC Bang.

It says 존앤존 PC방 and in English it’s written Zone&Zone. But what does Zone&Zone mean and where does it come from?

And look at the beverage below.

What does 모메존 mean? What does 모메 mean and what’s the meaning of 존 here? Of course you can’t find any of those words in the dictionary because this name is also a word play.

Do you know the word “좋은” or “좋다”?

“좋다” is the basic form of the adjective that means “to be good or nice”, right? And 좋은 is the form you use when you say it in front of a noun, like 좋은 학생, 좋은 사람, 좋은 날씨.

And if you pronounce 좋은 three times fast, it becomes ‘존’ 🙂  and now you know where it comes from.

So, 존앤존 could mean just ‘zones’  (but possibly not) but most people would think of a good PC ‘zone’. And 모메존 is a simplified spelling of how 몸에 좋은 sounds. 몸에 좋은 means ‘good for your body’ therefore “모메존 알로에” means Aloe that is good for your body. 🙂  Some people are opposed to using too much simplified spelling in brand names like this because these word plays might ‘destory’ the rules of the Korean language, but even if they were to name everything correctly like 좋은 앤 좋은 PC방 or 몸에 좋은 알로에, even more words are being simplified on the Internet already! 🙂