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The Vietnamese were dominated by the Chinese for a thousand years (from 1st-9th century), so they share many features of naming practices. Common names in Vietnam often have three to four words (or three to four syllables, since each word is formed by a syllable). The surname comes first, then the middle name and finally the first name. The surname often has no meaning but middle names and first names do. The first name is often a noun and the middle name is often a relevant adjective – for instance, Manh Phong means ‘hard wind’, Minh Hai means ‘morning sea’, and Thuy Ha means ‘sapphire river’.
Traditionally, a first name could reveal the year that a person was born because the Vietnamese have twelve animals to name a cycle of years – in order: mouse -Tí; buffalo – Suu; tiger – Dan or Ho; cat – Mao; dragon – Thin or Long; snake – Ti; horse – Ngo; goat – Mui; monkey – Than; rooster – Dau; dog – Tuat; pig – Hoi. In fact, the name Long is particularly popular, so parents often choose that name for their son regardless of the year the boy was born. However, generally speaking, parents no longer use names that refer to animals.
Families in Vietnam used to have a lot of children and many fathers put their sons and daughters’ names together to create themes or slogans with their names. Some families named their children as kinds of flowers or colours or even countries in the world (Duc, Phap, Anh, My, Nga mean Germany, France, England, USA, Russia). Sometimes the names all of a family’s children started with the same letter in the alphabet – for instance, H: Hai, Hieu, Hung, Hong, Huong, Hoa, Hoai… or T: Tung, Thuy, Toan, Thang, Thien… Examples of slogans created from children’s names are: Thao, Thuc, Ram, Dong meaning ‘None sleep in a full moon winter night’, or Binh, Tinh, Chien, Dau, Gioi meaning ‘Be yourselves, fighting well’, or Bac, Nam, Thong, Nhat meaning ‘north and south are united’, or Viet, Nam, Chien, Thang meaning ‘Vietnam will win’.
In many countries, naming a new baby after a famous person is considered an act of respect to the man, but this is not true in Vietnam. Imagine you can kick Ho Chi Minh’s backside or punish General Vo Nguyen Giap when he makes mistake! In Vietnamese culture, this is just unacceptable and considered rude to great leaders.
The Vietnamese have some names that are mostly used for boys, such as Duc, Hai, Manh, and some others for girls, such as Trang, Nhung, Dung. However, some names are used for both boys and girls, such as Phuong, Linh, Thanh. Generally, in Vietnam, names are not specific to boys or girls. Popular names include Dung (‘brave’), Thang (‘victory’), Thinh (‘prosperity’) and Thi (‘poetry’).
Conversely, a middle name does usually indicate the gender. If Van is the middle name, that person is a man. For women, it is Thi. Many Vietnamese have Van or Thi in their name, especially if they come from the countryside. In some cases, the middle name stands alone. In other cases, it goes with surname to form a shared surname for the clan. This means that all the men in that clan have the same surname and middle name. Ton That and Nguyen Lan are two clans like this with many famous men in Vietnamese history having one of these clan names. Among clan names, Cong Tang Ton Nu is the longest. Nowadays, many people take their mother’s surname as their middle name.
As in some parts of Africa, after a baby is born, a Vietnamese family often choses a meaningless, ugly name for him or her to use. They believe that the devil likes to take children with beautiful names or to make the baby ill. Therefore the use of an ugly name is intended to warn off the devil. This ugly name is widely used among family members, relatives and neighbours. Indeed many children do not use their official name until they go to school for the first time when they are six years old. In small communities, these nicknames can be kept for life. Examples of such unpleasant names that I have come across include names meaning Leaf, Bark, Root, and even Bucket.
Turning now to the use of surnames, foreigners often wonder why there are so many people with the surname Nguyen in Vietnam. In fact, millions of men and women in Vietnam have names starting with Nguyen Van or Nguyen Thi. The explantion is historical. The ancient capital of Vietnam is Hanoi city in the north. After a civil war in 17th century, the king and his clan moved far to the south to form his own kingdom. At that time, most of the south was unused land with a lot of fresh ground to reclaim. To attract immigrants from the north, the new king promised to change all his people’s surnames to Nguyen, that is the same surname as his own. It was an honour because people would feel like they were relatives of the king. Accordingly the new kingdom grew fast and later it defeated the northern government and unified the country.
Vietnam has 54 races which live peacefully within in the country’s borders. One minority race that lives up in the mountain has all its men’s and women’s surname and middle name as Ho Chi. They asked for that favour as a gift for their support during the war and the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh agreed – although nobody would be disrespectful enough to call their child Ho Chi Minh.
Finally, women in Vietnam do not take their husband’s surname after becoming married but keep their own surname for life. Decades ago, married women were often called by their husband’s name, but this is no longer the case.