The dangol in your favorite dangol restaurant once meant a shaman! In the Honam region, a hereditary shaman who passed the calling down through generations was called a dangol (or danggol), and even today in Jeolla Province "danggol-ne" still means a shaman. But here is the clever twist: the worshippers who kept a steady spiritual bond with such a shaman — always entrusting their rituals to that one person — were also called dangol. The heart of the word, in other words, was a relationship of always relying on the same person. That constancy, the habit of going to your appointed shaman whenever you fell ill or faced a major event, eventually widened into today's meaning of a shop you always deal with, or a regular who always comes back. Other theories trace the word to Dangun (檀君) or the Buddhist term danwol (檀越), but its origin in the hereditary shamans of Honam is reasonably clear.