Why are there so few Vietnamese surnames?

Though last names in Vietnam are, thanks to that early period under Chinese control, much older than they are in most parts of the world, the Vietnamese never seemed to much care about them. They just never became a fundamental way that Vietnamese people referred to each other or thought about themselves.

Why do most Vietnamese people have the same last name?

A tradition of showing loyalty to a leader by taking the family name is probably the origin of why there are so many Nguyens in Vietnam, and it is likely that there were plenty of people with the last name Nguyen before then, as there were never all that many last names in Vietnam to begin with.

How do Vietnamese last names work?

Vietnamese names are generally arranged as follows: [FAMILY NAME] [middle name] [given name]. For example, NGUYEN Van Nam (male) or LE Thi Lam (female). The ‘family name’ (or ‘surname’) is inherited from one’s parents and shared with other members of the individual’s immediate family .

What is the most common Viet last name?

Nguyễn is the most common Vietnamese surname / family name. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as Nguyen.

Is Kim a Vietnamese name?

From Sino-Vietnamese 金 (kim) meaning “gold, metal”.

What is the most common surname in Vietnam?

Finally, the most famous Vietnamese figure of the 20th century — revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh — was actually christened Nguyen Sinh Con. Notice a pattern? Indeed, Nguyen is the most common surname in Vietnam — an estimated 40 percent of people in the country (and the Vietnamese diaspora) carry the name, according to Vietnam’s Tuoi Tre News.

Why are Vietnamese names so different from other Vietnamese names?

The Vietnamese language is tonal, and so are Vietnamese names. Names with the same spelling (ignoring diacritics) but with different tones are different names, which can confuse non-Vietnamese people when the diacritics are dropped, as is commonly done outside Vietnam. Anyone applying for Vietnamese nationality must adopt a Vietnamese name.

How many Vietnamese people have the last name Nguyen?

Given that the global Vietnamese population totals about 94 million people, this means that some 38 million of them answer to “Nguyen.” The overwhelming prevalence of Nguyen — on a percentage basis — even surpasses the popularity of “Kim” and “Park” in Korea, “Singh” and “Patel” in India; and “Smith” and “Jones” in the Anglo-Saxon countries.

Why do Chinese people have so many different last names?

“The Chinese population uses fewer surnames and includes much larger isonymous groups than Caucasoids or Japanese because surnames appeared in China at least 3,000 years earlier than in Europe or Japan,” said researchers from Stanford University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a 1992 study.