Gim Busik's Samguk Sagi puts the Baekje kingdom's founding year to be sometime in 18 BCE with Onjo as its first king. Baekje's name was originally "Sipje," which meant "ten vassals" in reference to the number of vassals that initially followed Onjo in his endeavor to found a new kingdom. The name was changed to "Baekje," meaning "hundred vassals," when the vassals of Onjo's brother, Biryu, joined Onjo's kingdom after Biryu's failure.
Although legends and historical records claim that Onjo, the first king of Baekje was from the Goguryeo kingdom and a son of the quasi-legendary Jumong, his origins and his kingdom's origins are not known. The Baekje kingdom may have evolved out of the Mahan chiefdoms, but there is not much known about its development into a developed state society. Extant historical records detailing Baekje's history are scarce. However, the Baekje kingdom is noted in both the Japanese Nihonshoki, the second earliest record of Japanese history, and early Chinese histories. Like Goguryeo, the Baekje kingdom also claimed to be a successor of the Buyeo state, which had its heartland in present-day North Korea and Manchuria.
As a kingdom, Baekje developed earlier than the neighboring Shilla kingdom. By the time the Xianbei-ruled Wei Dynasty of northern China invaded the Korean peninsula, Baekje was already a powerful state with a strong centralized monarchy. Baekje at this time had a strong relationship with Japan and facilitated in spreading Korean and Chinese culture to the Japanese islands.
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