Throughout the

history of Vietnam The history of Vietnam can be traced back to around 20,000 years ago, as the first modern humans arrived and settled on this land, known as the Hoabinhians, which can be traced to modern-day Negritos. Archaeological findings from 1965, which are ...

, many names were used in reference to

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

History

Throughout the

, official and unofficial names have been used in reference to the territory of

was called Văn Lang during the

Hồng Bàng dynasty The Hồng Bàng period (Vietnamese: ''thời kỳ Hồng Bàng''), also called the Hồng Bàng dynasty,Pelley, p. 151 was a legendary, semi-mythical period in Vietnamese historiography, spanning from the beginning of the rule of Kinh Dươn ...

Âu Lạc Âu Lạc ( Hán tự: 甌貉 (Peripheral Records/Volume 1:6a): "王既併文郎國，改國號曰甌貉國。""The King then annexed the Văn Lang nation, changed the nation's name to Âu Lạc nation."/甌駱; (Volume 113): "且南方卑濕， ...

under Thục dynasty,

Nam Việt Nanyue (), was an ancient kingdom ruled by Chinese monarchs of the Zhao family that covered the modern Chinese subdivisions of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong, Macau, southern Fujian and central to northern Vietnam. Nanyue was establishe ...

during the Triệu dynasty, Vạn Xuân during the

Early Lý dynasty The Early Lý dynasty ( vi, nhà Tiền Lý; Hán Nôm: ), also called the Former Lý dynasty or Anterior Lý dynasty, was a dynasty which ruled Vietnam from AD 544 to 602. Its founder Lý Bí assumed the title of "Southern Emperor" ('). ...

, Đại Cồ Việt during the

Đinh dynasty Dinh is a Vietnamese surname. In Vietnam, the surname is spelled Đinh or Đình but ''Đình'' is very rare in Vietnamese. Notable people * Andy Dinh, Team SoloMid owner, player * Dan Dinh, ''League of Legends '' player, brother of Andy Dinh * ...

and Early Lê dynasty. Starting in 1054,

was called Đại Việt (Great Việt). During the

Hồ dynasty The Hồ dynasty (Vietnamese: , chữ Nôm: 茹胡； Sino-Vietnamese: ''Hồ triều, chữ Hán:'' 胡朝) was a short-lived Vietnamese dynasty consisting of the reigns of two monarchs, Hồ Quý Ly (胡季犛) in 1400–01 and his second ...

, Vietnam was called Đại Ngu. Việt Nam ( in

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

) is a variation of

(Southern

Việt The Vietnamese people ( vi, người Việt, lit=Viet people) or Kinh people ( vi, người Kinh) are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to modern-day Northern Vietnam and Southern China (Jing Islands, Dongxing, Guangxi). The native lan ...

), a name that can be traced back to the

Triệu dynasty The Triệu dynasty or Zhao dynasty (; vi, Nhà Triệu, links=no; 茹趙) ruled the kingdom of Nanyue, which consisted of parts of southern China as well as northern Vietnam. Its capital was Panyu, in modern Guangzhou. The founder of the dynas ...

(2nd century BC, also known as Nanyue Kingdom). The word "Việt" originated as a shortened form of Bách Việt, a word used to refer to a people who lived in what is now southern China in ancient times. The word "Việt Nam", with the syllables in the modern order, first appears in the 16th century in a poem attributed Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm. "Annam", which originated as a Chinese name in the seventh century, was the common name of the country during the colonial period. Nationalist writer

Phan Bội Châu Phan Bội Châu (; 26 December 1867 – 29 October 1940), born Phan Văn San, courtesy name Hải Thụ (later changed to Sào Nam), was a pioneer of Vietnamese 20th century nationalism. In 1903, he formed a revolutionary organization called ' ...

revived the name "Vietnam" in the early 20th century. When rival communist and anti-communist governments were set up in 1945, both immediately adopted this as the country's official name. In English, the two syllables are usually combined into one word, "Vietnam". However, "Viet Nam" was once common usage and is still used by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

and by the Vietnamese government.

Origin of ''Vietnam''

The term "" (Yue) () in

Early Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The S ...

was first written using the

logograph In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...

"戉" for an axe (a homophone), in

oracle bone Oracle bones () are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. '' Scapulimancy'' is the correct term if ox scapulae were used for ...

and bronze inscriptions of the late

Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and ...

( BC), and later as "越". At that time it referred to a people or chieftain to the northwest of the Shang.Theobald, Ulrich (2018
"Shang Dynasty - Political History"
in ''ChinaKnowledge.de - An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art''. quote: "Enemies of the Shang state were called fang 方 "regions", like the Tufang 土方, which roamed the northern region of Shanxi, the Guifang 鬼方 and Gongfang 𢀛方 in the northwest, the Qiangfang 羌方, Suifang 繐方, Yuefang 戉方, Xuanfang 亘方 and Zhoufang 周方 in the west, as well as the Yifang 夷方 and Renfang 人方 in the southeast." In the early 8th century BC, a tribe on the middle

Yangtze The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ; ) is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains (Tibetan Plateau) and flows ...

were called the

Yangyue The Yangyue () were a tribe of the Yue people, one of the ancient peoples of South China. In Chinese historical books, the earliest description about the Yangyue appeared during the Warring States period. The commonly accepted hypothesis is that ...

, a term later used for peoples further south. Between the 7th and 4th centuries BC Yue/Việt referred to the

State of Yue Yue (, Old Chinese: ''*''), also known as Yuyue (), was a state in ancient China which existed during the first millennium BC the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of China's Zhou dynasty in the modern provinces of Zhejiang, Sha ...

in the lower Yangtze basin and its people. From the 3rd century BC the term was used for the non-Chinese populations of south and southwest China and northern Vietnam, with particular states or groups called

Minyue Minyue () was an ancient kingdom in what is now the Fujian province in southern China. It was a contemporary of the Han dynasty, and was later annexed by the Han empire as the dynasty expanded southward. The kingdom existed approximately from ...

, Ouyue (Vietnamese:

Âu Việt The Âu Việt or Ouyue () were an ancient conglomeration of Baiyue tribes living in what is today the mountainous regions of northernmost Vietnam, western Guangdong, and northern Guangxi, China, since at least the third century BCE. They were belie ...

), Luoyue (Vietnamese:

Lạc Việt The Lạc Việt or Luoyue ( or ; pinyin: ''Luòyuè'' ← Middle Chinese: *''lɑk̚-ɦʉɐt̚'' ← Old Chinese *''râk-wat'') was a group of multilinguistic, specifically Kra-Dai and Austroasiatic, tribal peoples that inhabited ancient northe ...

), etc., collectively called the

Baiyue The Baiyue (, ), Hundred Yue, or simply Yue (; ), were various ethnic groups who inhabited the regions of East China, South China and Northern Vietnam during the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD. They were known for their short hair, b ...

(Bách Việt, ; ). The term Baiyue/Bách Việt first appeared in the book ''

Lüshi Chunqiu The ''Lüshi Chunqiu'', also known in English as ''Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals'', is an encyclopedic Chinese classic text compiled around 239 BC under the patronage of the Qin Dynasty Chancellor Lü Buwei. In the evaluation of Micha ...

'' compiled around 239 BC. According to Ye Wenxian (1990), apud Wan (2013), the ethnonym of the Yuefang in northwestern China is not associated with that of the Baiyue in southeastern China. In 207 BC, former

Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state (modern Gansu and Shaanxi), ...

general Zhao Tuo/Triệu Đà founded the kingdom of

Nanyue Nanyue (), was an ancient kingdom ruled by Chinese monarchs of the Zhao family that covered the modern Chinese subdivisions of Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong, Macau, southern Fujian and central to northern Vietnam. Nanyue was establis ...

/Nam Việt () with its capital at Panyu (modern

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

). This kingdom was "southern" in the sense that it was located south of other Baiyue kingdoms such as

and Ouyue, located in modern

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its cap ...

and

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , Chinese postal romanization, also romanized as Chekiang) is an East China, eastern, coastal Provinces of China, province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable citie ...

. Several later Vietnamese dynasties followed this nomenclature even after these more northern peoples were absorbed into China. In 968, the Vietnamese leader Đinh Bộ Lĩnh established the independent kingdom of Đại Cồ Việt (大瞿越) (possibly meaning "Great

Gautama Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...

's Viet", as Gautama's Chữ Hán transcription 瞿曇 is pronounced ''Cồ Đàm'' in Sino-Vietnamese); however, 瞿's homophone ''cồ'', 𡚝 in

Chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ; ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters ('' Chữ Hán'') to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represent ...

script, means "great") over the former Jinghai state. In 1054, Emperor

Lý Thánh Tông Lý Thánh Tông (30 March 1023 – 1 February 1072), personal name Lý Nhật Tôn , temple name Thánh Tông, was the third emperor of the Lý dynasty and the 8th ruler of the Vietnamese kingdom Đại Việt. In his reign, Lý Thánh Tôn ...

shortened the country's name to

Đại Việt Đại Việt (, ; literally Great Việt), often known as Annam ( vi, An Nam, Chữ Hán: 安南), was a monarchy in eastern Mainland Southeast Asia from the 10th century AD to the early 19th century, centered around the region of present-day H ...

("Great Viet"). However the names Giao Chỉ and

An Nam An, AN, aN, or an may refer to: Businesses and organizations * Airlinair (IATA airline code AN) * Alleanza Nazionale, a former political party in Italy * AnimeNEXT, an annual anime convention located in New Jersey * Anime North, a Canadian a ...

still were the widely known names that foreigners used to refer the state of Đại Việt during medieval and early modern periods,. For examples, ''Caugigu'' (

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

); ''Kafjih-Guh'' (

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

: كوة ك); ''Koci'' ( Malay); ''Cauchy'' (Portuguese); ''Cochinchina'' (English); ''Annam'' (Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and French). In 1787, US politician

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...

referred to Vietnam as ''Cochinchina'' for the purpose of trading for rice. "Sấm Trạng Trình" (The Prophecies of Principal Graduate Trình), which are attributed to Vietnamese official and poet Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm (1491–1585), reversed the traditional order of the syllables and put the name in its modern form "Việt Nam" as in "Vietnam's founding ancestor lays its basis" or "Vietnam's founding ancestor builds it up". At this time, the country was divided between the

Trịnh lords The Trịnh lords ( vi, Chúa Trịnh; Chữ Nôm: 主鄭; 1545–1787), formal title Trịnh Viceroy (; ), also known as Trịnh clan (鄭氏, ''Trịnh thị'') or the House of Trịnh, were a noble feudal clan who de facto ruled Northern Viet ...

Đông Kinh Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...

and the Nguyễn lords of Thừa Thiên. By combining several existing names, Nam Việt, Annam (Pacified South),

(Great Việt), and "Nam quốc" (southern nation), the oracles' author created a new name that referred to an aspirational unified state. The word "Nam" no longer implies Southern Việt, but rather that Vietnam is "the South" in contrast to China, "the North". This sentiment had already been in the poem "

Nam quốc sơn hà ''Nam quốc sơn hà'' (, ) is a famous 10th- to 11th-century Vietnamese patriotic poem. Dubbed "Vietnam's first Declaration of Independence", it asserts the sovereignty of Vietnam's rulers over its lands. The poem was first dictated to be read ...

" (1077)'s first line: 南國山河南帝居 "The Southern country's mountains and rivers the Southern Emperor inhabits". Researcher Nguyễn Phúc Giác Hải found the word 越南 "Việt Nam" on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bảo Lâm Pagoda, Haiphong (1558).Thành Lân,
Ai đặt quốc hiệu Việt Nam đầu tiên?
", ''Báo Đại đoàn kết'', March 14, 2003. Lord Nguyễn Phúc Chu (1675–1725), when describing Hải Vân Pass (then called ''Ải Lĩnh'', lit. "Mountain-Pass's

Saddle-Point In mathematics, a saddle point or minimax point is a point on the surface of the graph of a function where the slopes (derivatives) in orthogonal directions are all zero (a critical point), but which is not a local extremum of the functi ...

"), apparently used "Việt Nam" as a national name in his poem's first line , which was translated as "This mountain's pass is the most dangerous in Vietnam". Việt Nam was used as an official national name by Emperor Gia Long in 1804–1813. The Vietnamese asked permission from the Qing dynasty to change the name of their country. Originally, Gia Long had wanted the name Nam Việt and asked for his country to be recognized as such, but the

Jiaqing Emperor The Jiaqing Emperor (13 November 1760 – 2 September 1820), also known by his temple name Emperor Renzong of Qing, born Yongyan, was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fifth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from ...

refused since the ancient state of the same name had ruled territory that was part of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-spea ...

. The

refused Gia Long's request to change his country's name to Nam Việt, and changed the name instead to Việt Nam. Gia Long's

Đại Nam thực lục ''Đại Nam thực lục'' ( vi-hantu, 大南寔錄, lit. "Veritable Records of the Great South", "Annals of Đại Nam", "Chronicle of Greater Vietnam") was the official history of Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam. It contained the royal records of th ...

contains the diplomatic correspondence over the naming. In his account about the meeting with Vietnamese officials in Hue on January 17, 1832, Edmund Roberts, American embassy in Vietnam, wrote : "Trung Quốc" 中國, (literally "Middle Country" or "Central Country"), was also used as a name for Vietnam by Gia Long in 1805.

Minh Mang {{Orphan, date=December 2021 Minh (Chữ Nôm: 明) is a popular unisex given name of Vietnamese origin, written using the Chinese character (明) meaning "bright", and is also popular among other East Asian names. The Chinese name Ming has the s ...

used the name "Trung Quốc" 中國 to call Vietnam. Vietnamese Nguyen Emperor Minh Mạng sinicized ethnic minorities such as Cambodians, claimed the legacy of Confucianism and China's Han dynasty for Vietnam, and used the term Han people 漢人 to refer to the Vietnamese. Minh Mang declared that "We must hope that their barbarian habits will be subconsciously dissipated, and that they will daily become more infected by Han ino-Vietnamesecustoms." This policies were directed at the Khmer and hill tribes. The Nguyen lord Nguyen Phuc Chu had referred to Vietnamese as "Han people" in 1712 when differentiating between Vietnamese and Chams; meanwhile, ethnic Chinese were referred to as Thanh nhân 清人 or Đường nhân 唐人. The use of "Vietnam" was revived in modern times by nationalists including

, whose book '' Việt Nam vong quốc sử'' (History of the Loss of Vietnam) was published in 1906. Chau also founded the

Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội The Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội (, ''Restoration League of Vietnam'' or ''Restoration Society of Vietnam'') was a nationalist republican militant revolutionary organization of Vietnam that was active in the 1910s, under the leadership of Phan B ...

(Vietnam Restoration League) in 1912. However, the general public continued to use Annam and the name "Vietnam" remained virtually unknown until the

Yên Bái mutiny The Yên Bái mutiny ( vi, Tổng khởi-nghĩa Yên-báy, "Yên Bái general uprising") was an uprising of Vietnamese soldiers in the French colonial army on 10 February 1930 in collaboration with civilian supporters who were members of the Vi ...

of 1930, organized by the

Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng (; chữ Hán: ; ), abbreviated VNQDĐ or Việt Quốc, was a nationalist and democratic socialist political party that sought independence from French colonial rule in Vietnam during the early 20th century ...

(Vietnamese Nationalist Party). By the early 1940s, the use of "Việt Nam" was widespread. It appeared in the name of

Ho Chi Minh (: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as (' Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as P ...

's Việt Nam Độc lập Đồng minh Hội (

Viet Minh The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...

), founded 1941, and was even used by the governor of

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...

in 1942. The name "Vietnam" has been official since 1945. It was adopted in June by

Bảo Đại Bảo Đại (, vi-hantu, , lit. "keeper of greatness", 22 October 191331 July 1997), born Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thụy (), was the 13th and final emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of Vietnam. From 1926 to 1945, he was em ...

's imperial government in Huế, and in September by Ho's rival communist government in Hanoi.

Other names

1. Legendary Map of Vietnam 1834-1838

;;2b. Official since 1945 * Đế quốc Việt Nam (帝國越南, Empire of Vietnam) : 11 March – 25 August 1945. * Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa (越南民主共和, Democratic Republic of Vietnam) : 2 September 1945 – 18 February 1947, 10 October 1954 – 2 July 1976. * Quốc gia Việt Nam (國家越南, State of Vietnam) : 27 May 1948 – 26 October 1955. * Việt Nam Cộng hòa (越南共和, Republic of Vietnam) : 26 October 1955 – 30 April 1975. * Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam (共和社會主義越南, Socialist Republic of Vietnam) : 2 July 1976 to now. ;;3. Non-official * Việt Thường (越常, 越嘗, 越裳國, 越裳氏): Initially, the name of a people and/or nation to the south of

Jiaozhi Jiaozhi (standard Chinese, pinyin: ''Jiāozhǐ''), or Giao Chỉ (Vietnamese), was a historical region ruled by various Chinese dynasties, corresponding to present-day northern Vietnam. The kingdom of Nanyue (204–111 BC) set up the Jiaozhi Co ...

Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư The ''Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư'' ( vi-hantu, 大越史記全書; ; ''Complete Annals of Đại Việt'') is the official national chronicle of the Vietnamese state, that was originally compiled by the royal historian Ngô Sĩ Liên under ...

claimed that this was

's endonym when first presenting gifts to King Cheng of Zhou * Lĩnh Ngoại (嶺外) : lit. "Beyond the Ranges" (i.e.

Nanling Mountains The Nanling (), also known as the Wuling (), is a major mountain range in Southern China that separates the Pearl River Basin from the Yangtze Valley and serves as the dividing line between south and central subtropical zones. The main rang ...

). Used interchangeably with Lĩnh Nam (嶺南;

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally writte ...

: Lǐngnán; lit. "South of the Ranges"). Included

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

, Guangxi,

Hainan Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slightly l ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

, and

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a p ...

, as well as modern northern

. * Giao Chỉ quận (交趾郡): Chinese name for Đại Cồ Việt &

* An Nam quốc (安南國): Chinese name for

. The basis for various foreign exonyms for Vietnam. * Nam Việt quốc (南越國) : Proposed by

Nguyễn Nguyễn () is the most common Vietnamese surname. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as Nguyen. Nguyên (元）is a different word and surname. By some estimates 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this su ...

emperor Gia Long but rejected by Qing Emperor Jiaqing. * Đại Nam đế quốc (大南帝國) (1839 – 1945) : Diplomatic name. * Empire d'Annam : French exonoym. * Union indochinoise (1887–1945), Fédération indochinoise (1947–1953) or Liên bang Đông Dương (東洋聯邦). * Đại Hùng đế quốc (大雄帝國, 30 August 1917 – 11 January 1918) : Only during the

Thái Nguyên uprising The Thái Nguyên uprising ( vi, Khởi nghĩa Thái Nguyên) in 1917 has been described as the "largest and most destructive" anti-French rebellion in Vietnam (then part of French Indochina) between the Pacification of Tonkin in the 1880s and ...

. * Việt Nam dân quốc (越南民國, 1929? – 1930) : Only during the

. File:Đế-quốc Việt-Nam tuyên-bố độc-lập, 1945.jpg, ''Telegram Dailynews'' has reported the " Empire of Vietnam declared independence", 11 March 1945. File:Tem in dưới thời Đế quốc Việt Nam.jpeg, Stamps of the Empire of Vietnam. File:Cảnh chuẩn bị bầu cử Quốc hội khóa I tại ngõ Phất Lộc năm 1946.jpg, Preparing of the National Assembly elections, Phất Lộc lane,

Hanoi Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...

1946. File:20 Đồng - South Vietnam (1960) FAO 01.jpg, Coin of the

Republic of Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of t ...

in 1960. File:Stamps Confucius, 1961 issue Vietnam.jpg, Stamps of the

in 1961. File:COA Vietnamese Embassy Prague 5542.JPG,

ese

Embassy A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

on 25 April 2012.

Notes

Other spellings

In English, the spellings ''Vietnam'', ''Viet-Nam'', ''Viet Nam'' and ''Việt Nam'' have all been used. The 1954 edition of '' Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary'' gave both the unspaced and hyphenated forms; in response to a letter from a reader, the editors indicated that the spaced form Viet Nam was also acceptable, though they stated that because Anglophones did not know the meaning of the two words making up the name Vietnam, "it is not surprising" that there was a tendency to drop the space. In 1966, the U.S. government was known to use all three renderings, with the State Department preferring the hyphenated version. By 1981, the hyphenated form was regarded as "dated", according to Scottish writer

Gilbert Adair Gilbert Adair (29 December 19448 December 2011) was a Scottish novelist, poet, film critic, and journalist.Stuart Jeffries and Ronald BerganObituary: Gilbert Adair ''The Guardian'', 9 December 2011. He was critically most famous for the "fiend ...

, and he titled his book about depictions of the country in film using the unhyphenated and unspaced form "Vietnam". Currently "Vietnam" is most commonly used as the official name in English, leading to the adjective ''Vietnamese'' (instead of ''Viet'', ''Vietic'' or ''Viet Namese'') and 3-letter code VIE in

IOC The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...

and FIFA (instead of VNM). In all other languages mainly written in

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...

, the name of Vietnam is also commonly written without a space. Both Japanese and Korean formerly referred to Vietnam by their respective

Sino-Xenic pronunciations Sino-Xenic or Sinoxenic pronunciations are regular systems for reading Chinese characters in Japan, Korea and Vietnam, originating in medieval times and the source of large-scale borrowings of Chinese words into the Japanese, Korean and Vietnames ...

of the Chinese characters for its names, but later switched to using direct phonetic transcriptions. In Japanese, following the independence of Vietnam the names and were largely replaced by the phonetic transcription , written in katakana script; however, the old form is still seen in compound words (e.g. , "a visit to Vietnam"). Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs sometimes used an alternative spelling . Similarly, in the Korean language, in line with the trend towards decreasing usage of

hanja Hanja (Hangul: ; Hanja: , ), alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters () used in the writing of Korean. Hanja was used as early as the Gojoseon period, the first ever Korean kingdom. (, ) refers to Sino-Korean vocabulary, ...

, the Sino-Korean-derived name ''Wollam'' (, the Korean reading of ) has been replaced by ''Beteunam'' () in South Korea and ''Wennam'' () in North Korea.

History

Origin of ''Vietnam''

Other names

Notes

Other spellings

See also

References

Books

Cites