Hearing the name of the country of Vietnam certainly has its own characteristics. This country in Southeast Asia has several names of people who are of course well known. One of the famous Vietnamese names is the name Nguyen. So, who is Nguyen?
More than 40% of the Vietnamese population use Nguyen as their surname, which means that one in three people in Vietnam use this as their last name. According to the International Business Times, around 38 million people use Nguyen as their last name worldwide.
Vietnamese full names or surnames have a slightly different structure than Korean and Chinese names because they have three main parts: Last name, middle name, first name in this order, with the most common length being three or four words. Some even have six or seven words in their name. But why is Nguyen the most popular last name in Vietnam? There are several explanations for this!
During the years 420 AD to 528 AD, Chinese rule was at a chaotic climax. In order to survive, most of the Nguyen family from Anhui, Guangzhou and Zhejiang moved to the South and immigrated to Vietnam. Their community began to adopt Vietnamese culture and became the main basis for the growth of the last name Nguyen. Until the end of the first century, the immigration wave of the Nguyen family from China was still strong and the number of people with the last name Nguyen in Vietnam has continued to increase since then.
However, the biggest milestone in the development of the Nguyen surname occurred during the reign of Tran. After taking over the country from the Ly dynasty, Tran Thu Do, who was responsible for running the country on behalf of the teenage king Tran Canh, made a decision that had a profound impact on the entire community of people who used Ly as their last name. He asked all members of the Ly royal family, who were staying in hiding to change their last name to Nguyen.
The purpose behind it is to remove Ly as her last name so that no one will find out about her existence. However, the question of why Tran Thu Do chose Nguyen as the last name to replace Ly is still unanswered, maybe it was just a random choice. Then to continue with this decision, aristocrat Tran ordered that all citizens with Ly as their last name should change it to Nguyen.
Surprisingly, this last name change event has actually existed since time immemorial. Whenever a country was taken over by a new empire, it was an unwritten rule that all those with the family name from the previous royal family had to change their name to Nguyen.
History repeats itself when the Ho family defeated the Tran Monarchy and took over the country. The Ho royal family wants to find and kill any and all of the Trans. At the end of the Ho era, fearing revenge from the next reign, the Ho family members changed their last name to Nguyen so that the enemy would not find them.
Likewise, in the 16th century, when the Mac government fell, all Mac members changed their last name to Nguyen for safety. In the early years of the 19th century, the Nguyen government ran the country, the people of the Trinh (previous royal family) government also changed their last name to Nguyen so as not to be killed. During Nguyen’s reign, people who had the same last name as the royal family were more likely to receive more benefits. Many people and inmates took advantage of this by changing their last name to Nguyen.
As a result of the many historical events that led to the founding of Nguyen, the last royal family in Vietnamese history, the number of Nguyen families across the country has become larger than ever.
Before discussing events that took place in the Modern Age, it should be noted that in the Middle Ages, people from the lower classes had absolutely no family names. An honor dedicated only to the upper class people in society. In the 19th century, Vietnam was a French territory. France carried out large-scale population investigations during that period and faced a major challenge in which many Vietnamese did not have correct last names. So the French decided to give the people last names, and they chose Nguyen. They chose this name because it was the last monarchy in Vietnam.
During French colonial times, Nguyen remained the most common last name among Vietnamese. However, this incident again boosted the number of Nguyen people from the total population.
Now whenever you meet Vietnamese with the Nguyen family, you can not only confirm their country of origin, but also now you will know about the special history of their last name. Hopefully this article can be useful for you. Get interesting information from Indonesiar.com.
