Who I am?

 Structure and abbreviation of Vietnamese names

Indeed, this is a very particular trait of the Vietnameses’ identity, where the full name is always written in only one left-to-right order: “family name” (họ) + “intermediate name(s)” (tên đệm) + “principal name” (tên chính). Be attention: the “intermediate names” can’t be withdrawn from the full name such the “middle names” are in English or American people. And a Vietnamese person is identified by the last element(s) of her or his full name from right-to-left.

Such in my case, with a full name “Nguyen Tan Dai” people call me “Mr. Dai”, or “Mr. Tan Dai” to distinguish with another person “Nguyen Van Dai” for example, but almost never “Mr. Nguyen”. When we want to make abbreviation, in order of priority “N. T. Dai” then “N. Tan Dai” can be used, instead of the inversed order “Nguyen T. D.” or “Nguyen Tan D.”

This particular principle of Vietnamese identity is applied in all the contexts, including formal situations (with only some exceptions for ancient heroes or historical personalities). Thus, a former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung is called “Mr. the Prime Minister Dung” rather than “Mr. the Prime Minister Nguyen”), and his short name should be “N. T. Dung”. Similarly, his successor Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc will be called “Mr. the Prime Minister Phuc » instead of “Mr. Prime Minister Nguyen” (otherwise people could be confused between these two personalities).

 Why are there too much Nguyen?

The explication for this phenomenon is a little bit simple: for historical reasons, the Vietnamese people has only some hundreds of family names for a whole population of more than 95 million citizens. The French researcher Pierre Gourou seems to be the first Occidental scientific who is interested by the Vietnamese name’s study. By a publication in 1932, he states an account of 202 family names, based on a census of 270,000 persons in the Tonkin Delta, with 37% of “Nguyên”. Further studies then give a little greater number of family names, especially by taking in account the ethnic minorities’ ones, but do not yet reach a consensus for an officially recognized number (more than 300 in general).

In a most recent publication of Le Trung Hoa [1], we can see that the most commonly used family names in Vietnam actually are: “Nguyen” (38,4%), “Tran” (11%) and “Le” (9,5%). That means if you randomly meet 10 Vietnameses, you will have a chance to meet 4 “Nguyen”, 1 “Tran” and 1 “Le”. According to this author, the main reason of this “dominance” of the “Nguyen” is the fact that as long as the historic dynasties’ switching, in the feudal era, the members of the predecessor loyal family have to change their family name to avoid the hunt or all forms of threats from the successor one. Firstly, by the “Ly” forced to adopt the “Nguyen” family name in the 13^rd century, then the “Ho” in the 15^th century, and the “Mac” in the 16^th century, etc. And so on, up to the last feudal dynasty in Vietnam, the “Nguyen” in the 19^th-20^th centuries, when another kind of family name adoption is commonly applied: give the current royal family name as rewards to the talents or merited people…

Therefore, there are now in Vietnam about 36-37 million “Nguyen”, 10-11 million “Tran”, 9-10 million “Le”, and these three dominant family names cover around 60% of the country’s population. The next 30% are divided for a dozen of others common family names and the last 10% for almost 300 less frequently used family names. Consequently, Vietnamese people use a lot of the “principal names” or combine them with “intermediate names” to fill the lack of family names’ diversity. Only as the exchange with the international communities, they have to simplify the administrative procedures by accepting to call “first name” their “principal name” even if this one does not never stand before the “family name” in their own culture.

Briefly, in Vietnamese manner I am “Nguyễn Tấn Đại”, which is阮晉大 in ideogram or “written Chinese”, with less accentuated letters in French “Nguyên Tân Dai”, or more simplified in English writing way “Nguyen Tan Dai”. And very shortly, please call me “Mr. Dai”.