은 and 는 can have multiple meanings, so we’ve been warned, but we’ve been introduced to both as topic markers that identify the subject of a sentence. Unfortunately, no language translates one-to-one in an exact way, but it’s the Korean way of saying something that would be much more verbose in English. It would be equivalent of “speaking of”, “as for”, or—as it’s used—“this thing/person/whatever we are talking about”.

For example, 제 이름은 스티브예요 can be neatly summarized as “My name is Steve” and most translations of that would stop there as faithfully communicating the sentence’s meaning in as few words as necessary and in a way that neatly conforms to what the English equivalent would be. However, the the use of 은 is necessary to highlight for the sake of learning about Korean grammar. The more redundant English translation that emphasizes what 은 is doing would be “My name—which is what we’re talking about right now—is Steve.” The sentence isn’t talking about Steve. The sentence is talking about my name and my name happens to be Steve.

I have this committed to memory by now, but it’s worth emphasizing that 은 is the topic marker/particle to use if the last character of the subject ends in a consonant (e.g. 이름, which is Korean for “name”). 는 would follow when the last character of the subject ends in a vowel. For example, 제 친구는 의사예요 translates to “my friend is a doctor” or, in a more verbose manner, “my friend—who we are talking about right now—is a doctor.” However, the last character in “friend” (친구) is a vowel, invoking the use of 는 as a topic marker/particle.