Talk:Nguyen

Popular surname

Why is this name so common? According to the article, basically half of Vietnamese are Nguyens....--Menchi 11:13, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nguyen is the best last name that anybody can have.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.136.141.229 (talk • contribs)

If you get in a fight with one of the Nguyens then you would have all of them against you only because they all stick together.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.136.141.229 (talk • contribs)

Actually, not everyone with Nguyễn surname is related to each other. I don't think it's more than 1/10 of people with Nguyễn surname is related to each other, except they are Vietnamese!

阮

阮- how is this pronounced in its Chinese form?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Chinoiserie (talk • contribs)

Yun in Cantonese and Ruan in Mandarin and. --Menchi 05:00, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is also alternative spellings apart from the standard ruǎn (Ruan3) in Mandarin: juàn (juan4), yuán (yuan2). 阮 Ruan3/ruǎn is also the name of a small state during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) located in the southeast of modern-day Gansu Province And interestingly in the linguistically very archaic Teochew dialect (= Chaozhou Dialect, 潮州話, Cháozhōuhuà), a Southern Min-Dialect (Minnan) it is pronounced: nguêng2, listen pronunciation on: http://www.mogher.com/阮 which sounds much more similar to the Vietnamese pronunciation.

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Requested move 19 January 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 07:01, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

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Nguyen → Nguyễn – The particular surname mentioned in this page is Nguyễn, and I believe we should stick to the original version prior to being changed. Furthermore, there are many types of "Nguyens" in the Vietnamese language, like "Nguyên" (Yuan in Chinese) which is not exactly the same as the Nguyen mentioned here. Virtuous09 (talk) 01:57, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

• Comment This discussion has been held before, though it was five years ago. It ended narrowly with a decision to move the article here. See above. Largoplazo (talk) 02:53, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose I can't say that I've ever seen it with the diacritics in an English-language text, so I can't imagine that would be found to be the WP:COMMONNAME. I suspect that most publishers in English have not even traditionally had the wherewithal to render Vietnamese diacritics—they were certainly generally unavailable before the advent of Unicode. The fact that I didn't even know that there are many types of "Nguyens" in Vietnamese strengthens my sense that as many distinct names as they may be in Vietnamese, we write them all the same in English.

For a less subjective analysis, see the Google Ngram for the two renderings of the name in Google's corpus of books in English. Largoplazo (talk) 02:49, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

• Support. This is a Vietnamese name, not and English one, and Wikipedia does not suffer the technical limitations that prevent use of diacritics (cf. Đorđević, Ibáñez, Kalniņš, Müller, Ó hEidirsceóil). —  AjaxSmack  05:22, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
• Support. per quality full font sources, and per standard en.wp MOS and titling practice with (a) original accents on all non-Anglo family/dynasty/surnames, including Vietnamese ones, (b) using full font on all Vietnam articles. Incidentally the original move was an early shot in the diacritics war, and should never have been closed as a move. The agitation started as mentioned in the previous RM as early as 11 August 2011‎ when Kauffner (subsequently C-banned editor) moved Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên to Nguyen Phuc Nguyen. It's good to see someone remember this article and restore it to consistency with the rest of the full-font English Wikipedia article corpus. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:48, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - based on the evidence presented, this is the form most commonly used in the English language. Not only is it the most common, it absolutely dominates in every search scenario. We should not be weighing those results based on what we interpret might be true if there were full fonts available - we simply take things as they are. If there was any confusion with other words or usages, then there would be an existing hatnote or disambiguation page to resolve that. There being none, then there seems to be little confusion. -- Netoholic @ 09:30, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
• Comment Obviously there is no technical limitation to being able to represent the characters with full diacritics. The question isn't can we move it but should we. That question, as all questions on Wikipedia, ought to be based on guidance already provided in Wikipedia project pages, which may or may not be "Do it the way that's officially correct in the outside world". For example, that's why our article on the 41st US president is under Bill Clinton and not William Jefferson Clinton. Largoplazo (talk) 19:26, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
• Comment Regarding the single way of writing what is said above to be multiple distinct names in Vietnamese, the reference to Chinese leads to support for the status quo. The name Yuan (surname) didn't help, but I checked Wang (surname) and learned that what, to English speakers, is one surname, corresponds to two different surnames in Chinese—in pinyin, Wáng and Wāng; in Chinese, 王 and 汪. The two names are under one article representing the one primary English spelling, Wang, not under separate articles Wáng and Wāng, the distinction between which would be opaque and, therefore, unhelpful to most English speakers, based on their own unawareness of the significance of those diacritics and the unlikelihood of coming across them in written English, nor, of course, should they be listed under 王 or 汪 just because Wikipedia has no technical limitations barring this. Largoplazo (talk) 19:33, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE. Calidum 22:25, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Not even a matter of "use English", the name is authentically "Nguyen" in more contexts and usages, so that should win out. This isn't a matter of "it's actually Nguyễn, but publishers are too lazy to include the diacritic", it's a case of the name was actually changed to Nguyen, and using the diacritic would be outright incorrect. (I will add that from personal experience, all of the Nguyens I know do not use the diacritic, but the general impression elsewhere seems to match that impression anyway, so it's not just a personal anecdote.) SnowFire (talk) 16:15, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
• Comment While "Nguyen" is commonly used by means of referring to someone with this specific surname, it can make matters confusing when trying to distinguish the diacritics, as I mentioned before with "Nguyên" (i.e Yuan dynasty). Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên is also a notable example as while you can speculate that "Nguyen Phuc Nguyen" most likely has the surname of "Nguyễn", you cannot say the same for the individual's given name (once again the Vietnamese version of "Yuan", as in the Yuan dynasty). Also, this article clearly refers to the "Nguyen" that is written as "Nguyễn" in Vietnamese and "阮" in Han characters and not other similar varieties of "Nguyen", as otherwise it would've been more specific and "Nguyen" would've been the appropriate term. Responding to the above comment regarding the usage of "Nguyen" in the English language, many English-speaking countries, most notably the United States, do not allow the usage of diacritics, leading to most overseas Vietnamese removing them (i.e Trương to Truong). It's not a matter of how the general population refers to this surname, but how it originated.Virtuous09 (talk) 01:57, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Origin and usage; Changes of family name

I suggest the removal of most of the text in these section. The history of the name has never been properly researched; there are only assumptions with few to no evidences. --KomradeRice (talk) 15:41, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Nguyễn is Vietnamese, not Chinese

Implications that Nguyễn is Chinese is completely false. The China we now know today has transformed through Manchu and Mongolian rule. Several arguments against stating that Nguyễn, or any other Vietnamese surname are Chinese as follows: - If Nguyễn is Chinese because it came from a Chinese character, then by that logic, all other Vietnamese surnames are also "Chinese". But of course, Vietnamese is not Chinese. Vietnamese are "Austroasiatic people", Chinese are "Sino-Tibetan". - The character is pronounced Nguyễn in Vietnamese, and other Chinese dialects pronounce it differently, making not Chinese again. - If names such as Nguyễn is Chinese, then all Korean names are inherently "Chinese", as well as Japanese Kanji names. Koreans are of course, not Chinese, and Japanese are also not Chinese.

- Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese ultimately might find some similarity with Chinese culture, but they are respectively not Chinese. The philosophy over the years might describe "Little China" in the case of Korea, "Real China" in the case of Japan, "South realm" for Vietnam whilst "North realm" for China, but in all instances, they are not Chinese nor are any of them under Chinese government rule. 

- Claiming that Nguyễn is Chinese encourages Chinese expansionism over a already very tense South China Sea (China+Taiwan) /East Sea (Vietnam)/West Sea (Philippines) etc. dispute. This we do not want.Vpha (talk) 22:18, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Your entire analysis above is your own and original research, which is not permitted as the basis for content on Wikipedia. It also demonstrates that you aren't familiar with how languages changes and how languages borrow from each other. Chinese, through its dominance, had an enormous impact on neighboring languages, including Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. It's like denying that a large portion of English vocabulary comes from French because acknowledging it (which is the truth) would somehow encourage France to dominate England again. Reality isn't determined by what you do or don't want. Largoplazo (talk) 22:35, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Vpha: Please cite some source for your revisionist history instead of using original research. If you read any scholarly work on Vietnamese history during the Second Chinese domination (for example: Keith Weller Taylor's The Birth of Vietnam), you can see there is a mass of Chinese immigration to Giao Chi during this era and in fact most of the ruling families in Vietnam (especially the Tran) trace their roots to China. DHN (talk) 23:39, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

None of this is revisionist nor is it original research - these are all truths. Tell me now, do Nguyễn's and Trần's still speak their Chinese dialect? No. There may have been en masse migrations from China but the fact is, there was many pre-Sinitic civilizations before Chinese colonialism, which is what influenced Vietnamese to the core, and what distinguishes us from the Chinese. To link Vietnamese directly to China any further causes more harm then good, especially since the Baiyue peoples got wiped out in the name of "Huayi". Additionally, Vietnamese IQ recently from some website was lowered from 94 all the way down to 85 in the course of 2 years, which is of course, a lie, and was in fact, lowered below Cambodia and China. This only means that China and Cambodia are mortal enemies of Vietnam and are involved in trying to influence the world by lowering the Vietnamese to barbarian status. So it doesn't matter if you're ancient Chinese or whatnot, you are still caught up with the rest of the Vietnamese in dealing with this problem. This isn't crab mentality, but this is what's called reality, my reality as I see it, and not your safe protected bubble of "I'm Vietnamese but I'll pretend I'm Chinese so that I don't have to deal with the problems Vietnamese people have" kind of reality. Vpha (talk) 00:51, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

In addition to what I have said, I believe most Western texts about Vietnam are lies. There have been Western texts that have said "Vietnamese borrowed Chinese characters and used it for their own" - but John Phan, an overseas Vietnamese who I trust way more after reading his writings, already indicated and proposed the presence of Annamese Chinese before the annexation by Han dynasty, which indicates a native, localised form of Chinese that intermixed with Austroasiatics already - so sorry if you think I don't read scholarly texts but I do, and I generally believe Western analysis to be inferior to native Vietnamese or Vietnamese analysis about Vietnam. You can try to make me read that book but after a few pages and scanning through I'm more inclined to chuck that source into the bin.Vpha (talk) 01:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Do British people today speak Norman French or Old French? No. That doesn't mean the vast vocabulary of words from those languages that were borrowed into English centuries ago and that are still there are now, somehow, not of French origin. They still are. It doesn't matter what reasons you come up with not to want something to be true. "To link Vietnamese directly to China any further causes more harm then good"—it doesn't matter, if it's true it's true. In a discussion of what the truth is, telling why you don't want something to be true, why it would be bad, from your point of view, if it were true, is a big waste of your time because it has no impact on whether it's true. And it dilutes any attempts, by you or anyone else, at valid, rational argument.

By the way, I'm entirely aware that centuries of Western analysis of other cultures is ethnocentric, interpreting everything from a Western frame of reference and frequently agenda-based or simply ignorant or oblivious. I'm not arguing that that isn't the case. But that doesn't mean all Western analysis of everything is false. So let's talk specifics, rather than making blanket rejections out of hand. Largoplazo (talk) 02:42, 16 March 2022 (UTC)