How you speak to your grandma at home is very different from how you talk with your best friend on a Friday night out. Humans learn to adapt to different environments, changing our personalities and mannerisms to meet the needs of our context.
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For multi-lingual folk, switching languages can be a trigger to change our personalities; this phenomenon is called frameshifting. How our personality changes depends on our perception of the language we speak.
Sometimes the phrases and words of one language will seep into another. I know plenty of English speakers who claim to have no knowledge of the French language but will often say bon appétit or excusez-moi. This mix of languages enables us to have broader expression of our ideas and emotions, accessing our multiple personalities.
This is why I still often find myself inserting Vietnamese words into my English writing, especially regarding names.
English is my most spoken language. I&#;ve achieved my biggest educational and professional wins in English-speaking environments. It&#;s no surprise that when I talk in English, I feel confident, thoughtful and outgoing.
Fluency doesn&#;t necessarily impact how uplifting I feel speaking a language. When I communicate in my very slow and broken Spanish, I feel even bigger than when I talk in Vietnamese, my mother language. Hearing Spanish, even as I struggle to translate the words in my mind, makes me feel adventurous, optimistic and fun because my most extraordinary solo adventures have been to Spanish-speaking countries.
When I communicate in Vietnamese, the first language I learnt as a child, I feel passive, courteous and young. This makes sense since, today, I only ever speak Vietnamese when speaking to my elders.
While I&#;m much better now as an adult, my hands used to sweat with nerves whenever I needed to greet my elders in Vietnamese. I wasn&#;t afraid of strangers or speaking in front of crowds. Quite the opposite, I loved singing and dancing and thrived off of having many eyes on me. What made me nervous were the complex rules around Vietnamese names. These rules tell us a lot about Vietnamese culture.
When greeting an elder, even as an adult, it&#;s polite to cross your arms and bow. It&#;s socially acceptable to give a broad wave and say &#;Hello everyone&#; in informal settings. However, in formal settings, you&#;re expected to acknowledge each person by their title and name, which I suppose isn&#;t so different from western conventions.
What makes the Vietnamese greeting tricky is that our naming convention is relational. This means a person&#;s title changes depending on who they are to you and your family. Here&#;s an example of how I would greet two aunties and two uncles:
&#;Hello, C&#;u Six (hello, maternal uncle six).&#;
&#;Hello, Chú Five (hello, paternal uncle five).&#;
&#;Hello, Dì Five (hello, maternal aunty five)
&#;Hello, M&#; Six (hello, aunty / maternal uncle&#;s wife six).&#;
Let&#;s say Hien, one of my many cousins also had to greet the same crowd. Hien would use completely different titles for the same four people because their relations to her are different to mine.
My maternal uncle six is her paternal uncle six. Instead of calling him C&#;u Six she calls him Bác Six (paternal uncle 6, older than her father).
A photo of my cousin and I in VietnamThis can seem &#;confounding&#; for someone new to relational naming conventions, as Monique Brinson Demery prefaced her book &#;Finding the Dragon Lady&#;. I have a lot to say about the term &#;Dragon Lady&#; and Madame Nhu&#;s representation in the media, but that&#;s an entire blog for another time.
I mention Demery because since the day I&#;ve opened her book, I&#;ve wanted to re-write her note on Vietnamese names, so she is very much the inspiration for today&#;s post.
See, Demery white-washed her interpretation using brief comparisons to western conventions rather than explaining the cultural significance of our names. In so many aspects of our lives, folks from diverse backgrounds are expected to assimilate to western, white culture. The way we talk, the way we dress, the smell of our foods, we are expected to adjust to suit the palette of white culture. The very least I expect from others looking to engage with the Vietnamese culture, is an appreciation for our names.
Demery said she &#;struggled over what to call various Vietnamese people in the book&#; and &#;tried to be consistent&#;. The nature of Vietnamese names doesn&#;t call for consistency; it calls for an appreciation of our relational culture.
I&#;m not completely against Demery&#;s want to use consistent names for the reader&#;s convenience. As a writer, I understand the importance of keeping the reader engaged and that learning new language conventions can decrease readability. However, convenience is the erasure of nuance, and the entire purpose of my writing about my family&#;s history is to capture nuances that are otherwise lost in translation.
Like all societies, Vietnamese culture is not monolithic. Language conventions change over time and even differ from family to family. Many of my cousins have already ditched the formal titles we have for one another. As I write my family&#;s history and mythology, I&#;ll stick to the naming conventions mum taught me, recognising it may be different to what other Vietnamese children are taught today. Many of the characters I write about will have multiple names depending on the story&#;s context. My writing will therefore be mini Vietnamese lessons!
Here are some general rules to know:
In western cultures, it&#;s common for the name to be ordered as follows:
[Given Name] [Middle Name] [Family Name].
In Vietnam, it&#;s the reverse.
[Family Name] [Middle Name] [Given Name]
When they first came to Australia, mum and most of our relatives didn&#;t realise names are ordered differently here compared to Vietnam.
So, when signing their first official Australian documents, they wrote using the Vietnamese convention.
This small, seemingly mundane mistake has reaped havoc for many Vietnamese families. In my family, Mum has had essential applications denied because the order of her name isn&#;t exactly the same on all of her identifying documents.
&#;Sorry, ma&#;am&#;, they would say in their disinterested customer service voice, &#;it&#;s our policy. Your name has to be exactly the same across all documents&#;.
Over the years, Mum has tried to update her official documents several times. More than once, she has been met with mocking impatience from administrators who couldn&#;t understand why she would make such a &#;stupid&#; mistake.
Good luck to those administrators if they ever found themselves moving to Vietnam.
In English, your nickname is usually derived from your formal name.
For example, Leonard may be shortened to Leo or Deborah to Debbie.
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It&#;s predictable for English speakers to guess your nickname from your formal name and vice versa.
In Vietnamese, your nickname is usually entirely different from your English name. Like in western environments, nicknames are usually used by people close to you.
For example, my eldest sister&#;s formal name is Hiep, but people close to her call her Gai.
You don&#;t have to be related to a person to call them aunty, uncle, brother or sister. If I met a stranger and didn&#;t know their name, I would call them aunty or uncle (if they were much older than me) or brother and sister (if they were similarly aged).
I always believed that this has to do with Vietnam&#;s creation story, though mum has never confirmed. Vietnam&#;s story of creation says that the sea dragon, L&#;c Long Quân and mountain fairy Âu Cơ fell inlove, married and bore 100 eggs. These eggs hatched to be the first humans, making us all descendants from the same line.
Instead of calling one another by our names, people often call each other by their birth numbers. This helps strangers quickly identify a person&#;s placement in their family hierarchy.
In a family, the eldest child is called two. They&#;re never called one because their parents are the eldest. The second child is three, then four etc. Instead of a number, the youngest is called út (youngest).
For example, mum is tenth in her family. Her elder siblings call her Ten, her younger brother calls her Ch&#; Ten (older sister ten), and my cousins call her Cô or Dì Ten (aunty ten).
Sometimes to avoid confusion between the multiples of the same number, people will call each other by [title] [number] [first name]. For example, my cousin would call mum Cô Ten An.
Instead of using my sibling&#;s given names throughout my writing, I&#;ll call them by their numbers.
What you call a person will vary based on their age compared to you or your parents.
For example, suppose the person is unrelated, similarly aged to you, but slightly older. In that case, you&#;ll call them anh (older brother) or ch&#; (older sister).
If the person is unrelated, similarly aged but younger, you&#;ll call them em, regardless of gender. B&#;n (friend) is another gender-neutral term you can call someone similarly aged.
If the person is unrelated and more closely aged to your parents or much older, you call them aunty or uncle. There are many variations for aunty and uncle, so I&#;ve listed them in the table below.
Unlike the casual approach my western friends take in English, there are no circumstances where I would call an elder by their first name when speaking in Vietnamese. It&#;s like meeting your primary school teacher and trying to call them by their first names; it&#;s unnatural and just wrong.
Your parent&#;s age overrides your age when referring to relatives.
For example, dad is the eldest male of his siblings, making him the most senior family member. As his daughter, I hold the most senior title among my paternal cousins. Even though my paternal cousins are older than me, they need to call me ch&#; (older sister) because my dad is more senior than their dads.
We can see very clearly how hierarchy is embedded into our naming system. Those with strong traditional views may insist on always using these hierarchical naming conventions, even in informal settings.
Several of my cousins, usually the male ones, have gotten into physical fights because another cousin was &#;disrespectful&#; and didn&#;t call them anh (elder brother).
My more progressive cousins and I usually interpret these tantrums as desperate power plays and are even less likely to use the formal titles with whoever is picking the fight.
Mum regularly mis-titled people as a way to insult them. For example, she called my dad &#;ông Kim&#;, grandpa Kim. So, if you&#;re ever confused about why someone young may be called an old man or someone old may be called a young person, know it&#;s a poke at their position.
I&#;ll save this dictionary in future posts so you can easily refer back if you&#;re new to Vietnamese.
If you&#;re Vietnamese and have different titles used in your family, I would love to hear about it! Feel free to reach out on Linkedin or &#;
Remember to click &#;follow&#; if you&#;re enjoying my posts.
Sources
Does Your Personality Change Depending on the Language You Speak?
Change of Language, Change of Personality?
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