From its founding until its growth into a full-fledged kingdom, Silla was recorded with various
Hanja (Chinese charaters) phonetically approximating its native Korean name “Saro”, “Sara” ,
“seorabeol(suhrabal)”.

The original meaning of the native word may have been "capital city," although there are
various other speculations. The direct descendant of the word "Seora-beol," the name of the
Silla capital, can be seen in the Late Middle Korean form Syeobeul meaning "royal capital city,"
which soon changed into Syeo'ul, and finally resulted in Seo'ul in the Modern Korean language.

Today, "Seoul" is the name of the present capital of South Korea, a city which was previously
known as Hanseong or Hanyang. The name of either Silla or its capital Seora-beol(suhrabal)
was also widely known throughout Northeast Asia as the ethnonym for the ancestors of the
medieval and modern Korean nation, appearing as "Shiragi” or "Shiragi-bito" in the language of
the Yamato Japanese and as "Solgo" or "Solho" in the language of the medieval Jurchens and
their later descendants, the Manchus.

Silla was also referred to as Gyerim, literally "chicken forest", a name that has its origins in the
forest near the Silla capital where by legend the state's founder was hatched from an egg.