Sometimes it seems like every other Vietnamese is named “Nguyen” and that is basically correct. Forty percent of the Vietnames population carries this family name. The Vietnamese normally have three names. The family name is placed first, followed by a middle name and then a Christian name. For example, the Vietnamese Prime Minister’s name is Nguyen Tan Dung. There are a lot of diacritics in Vietnamese, which gives a word a new meaning. These are crucial to the Vietnamese, but for technical reasons omitted here.
According to tradition, there are one hundred family names in Vietnam. In reality, there seems to be just over two hundred. Of these, Nguyen, Tran and Le have a reassuring majority with some 60 percent between them. The middle name is given by the parents and the use of it varies. Some families give the same middle name to all their children, boys and girls, to indicate generation. That is, however, not a rule. Vietnamese women retain their family name as they marry.
The ambition for this post was to disclose the meaning of Nguyen. This proved a bit difficult. The website yutoian.com tells us that the name is derived from Mandarin Chinese, in which it is “ruan”. The word represents a plucked string instrument. The man Ruan that so successfully spread his name was a governor in the latter part of the 6th century.
This is not much, but it is a start – to be continued. There are several Vietnamese names that could be interesting to understand. “Ho” is one and there also was one well know South Vietnamese person whose name broke the rules: Cao Ky. The next time I meet a Vietnamese person, I know what to ask about.
According to tradition, there are one hundred family names in Vietnam. In reality, there seems to be just over two hundred. Of these, Nguyen, Tran and Le have a reassuring majority with some 60 percent between them. The middle name is given by the parents and the use of it varies. Some families give the same middle name to all their children, boys and girls, to indicate generation. That is, however, not a rule. Vietnamese women retain their family name as they marry.
The ambition for this post was to disclose the meaning of Nguyen. This proved a bit difficult. The website yutoian.com tells us that the name is derived from Mandarin Chinese, in which it is “ruan”. The word represents a plucked string instrument. The man Ruan that so successfully spread his name was a governor in the latter part of the 6th century.
This is not much, but it is a start – to be continued. There are several Vietnamese names that could be interesting to understand. “Ho” is one and there also was one well know South Vietnamese person whose name broke the rules: Cao Ky. The next time I meet a Vietnamese person, I know what to ask about.
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