and with time the prefix was dropped. Etymological dictionaries record that China's shaozhou (shaojiu, ??), Japan's shochu (shochu, ??), and Korea's soju (soju, ??) have the same etymology. In 2008, "soju" was included in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Merriam-Webster dated the word's appearance in the American English lexicon to 1951. In 2016, the word was included in the Oxford Dictionary of English.

Another name for soju is noju