Names of Ho Chi Minh City

The city now known as Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnamese: Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh listen) has gone by several different names during its history, reflecting settlement by different ethnic, cultural and political groups. Originally known as Prey Nôkôr while a part of the Khmer Empire, it came to be dubbed Sài Gòn (listen) informally by Vietnamese settlers fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn War to the north. In time, control of the city and the area passed to the Vietnamese, who gave the city the name of Gia Định. This name remained until the time of French conquest in the 1860s, when the occupying force adopted the name Saïgon for the city, a westernized form of the traditional Vietnamese name. The current name was given after the Fall of Saigon in 1975, and honors Hồ Chí Minh, the first leader of North Vietnam. Even today, however, the informal name of Sài Gòn remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora and local southern Vietnamese.
The area where present-day Ho Chi Minh City is located was likely inhabited long since prehistory; the empire of Funan (although it is still debated whether Funan is a Khmer state) and later Chenla maintained a presence in the Mekong Delta for centuries. The city was known as Prey Nôkôr (Khmer: ព្រៃនគរ) to the Khmer Empire, which likely maintained a settlement centuries before its rise in the 11th and 12th centuries. The most popular interpretation of the name, and one supported by former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk, suggests that the name means "forest city" or "forest kingdom"—prey meaning forest or jungle, and nôkôr being a Khmer word of Sanskrit origin meaning city or kingdom. The name Krŭng Prey Nôkôr (Khmer: ក្រុងព្រៃនគរ; "Prey Nôkôr City") is currently used to refer to Ho Chi Minh City in the Khmer language.
Beginning in the 1620s, Prey Nôkôr was gradually settled by Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn War further to the north. In 1623, Khmer King Chey Chettha II (1618–1628) allowed the Vietnamese to settle in the area, which they colloquially referred to as Sài Gòn, and to set up a custom house at Prey Nôkôr. The increasing waves of Vietnamese settlers which followed overwhelmed the Khmer kingdom—weakened as it was due to war with Thailand—and slowly Vietnamized the area. Upon capturing the city during the Cochinchina Campaign in 1859, the French officially westernized the city's traditional name into "Saigon" (French: Saïgon).
Since the time of original Vietnamese settlement, the informal name of Sài Gòn has remained in daily speech; apart from official matters, it is still the most common way to refer to the city inside Vietnam, despite an official name change after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Sài Gòn is still used to refer to the central district, District 1. Sài Gòn Railway Station in District 3, the main railway station serving the city, retains the name, as well as the city's zoo. The name is also found in company names, book titles and even on airport departure boards: the IATA code for Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport is SGN.
There is much debate about the origins of the name, the etymology of which is analyzed below. The Vietnamese most often write the name as Sài Gòn, in two words, following the traditional convention in Vietnamese spelling. Some, however, exceptionally write the name of the city as "SaiGon" or "Saigon" in order to save space or give the name a more Westernized look.
In addition, both the names Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City appear within the official seal of the city.
The etymology of Saigon is uncertain.
The original toponym behind Sài Gòn, was attested earliest as 柴棍, with two phonograms whose Sino-Vietnamese readings are sài and côn respectively, in Lê Quý Đôn's Phủ biên tạp lục (撫邊雜錄 "Miscellaneous Chronicles of the Pacified Frontier", c. 1776), wherein Lê relates that, in 1674, Cambodian prince Ang Nan was installed as uparaja in 柴棍 (Sài Gòn) by Vietnamese forces.
柴棍 also appears later in Trịnh Hoài Đức's Gia Định thành thông chí (嘉定城通志 "Comprehensive Records about the Gia Định Citadel", c. 1820), Nam quốc địa dư giáo khoa thư (南國地輿教科書 "Textbook on the Geography of the Southern Country", 1908), etc.
Adrien Launay, in the chapter "Documents Historiques II: 1728 - 1771" of Histoire de la Mission de Cochinchine (1688−1823), cites 1747 documents containing the toponyms: provincia Rai-gon (for Sài Gòn), Rai-gon thong (for *Sài Gòn thượng "Upper Saigon"), & Rai-gon-ha (for *Sài Gòn hạ "Lower Saigon").
It is probably a transcription of Khmer ព្រៃនគរ (Prey Nokôr), or Khmer ព្រៃគរ (Prey Kôr).
This name may have originated from the many Bombax ceiba (kapok) trees that the Khmer people had planted around Prey Nôkôr, and which can still be seen at Cây Mai temple and surrounding areas. Another explanation is that the etymological meaning "twigs" (sài) and "boles" (gòn) refers to the dense and tall forest that once existed around the city, a forest to which the Khmer name, Prey Nokor, already referred.
In Chinese, the city is referred to as 西貢, which is pronounced Sāigung in Cantonese and which 20th-century Vietnamese scholar Vương Hồng Sển [vi] proposed to be a transcription of Vietnamese Sài Gòn; 西貢 is also pronounced Tây Cống in Sino-Vietnamese, Sai-kòng in Teochew, Xīgòng in Mandarin, etc. But 西貢 has never been written in Vietnamese records, only 柴棍 (Sài Gòn).
French officer Francis Garnier proposes that Sài Gòn's etymology is in the Cantonese name of Chợ Lớn (chữ Nôm: 𢄂𡘯), the Chinese district of Saigon. The Cantonese (and original) name of Cholon is "Tai-Ngon" (堤岸), which means "embankment" (French: quais). The theory posits that "Sài Gòn" derives from "Tai-Ngon". Vương (1960) favored this etymology.
The proposal that Sài Gòn is from non-Sino-Vietnamese reading of Chinese 堤岸 tai4 ngon6 (“embankment”, SV: đê ngạn), the Cantonese name of Chợ Lớn, (e.g. by Garnier, 1866 and Vương, 1960) has been critiqued as folk-etymological, as:
According to Lê Van Phát, a Vietnamese military officer, a similar source for the name may have developed from the Thai words Cai-ngon, meaning "cotton bush" or "cotton plant". Lê stated that Laotians refer to Saigon as "Cai-ngon".
The Cham etymology is considered to be one of the candidates for the etymology of Saigon. The Khmer etymology is considered to be the least likely candidate according to some linguists because of the complex onset of "Prey" as opposed to the simple onset of "Sài". Furthermore, there is voice distinction between the onsets of "kôr" and "gòn", not to mention syllabic syncope of the [no] in "Nôkôr" without the accompanying tone rise as normally occurs during monosyllabification in Southeast Asian tone languages (Thurgood, 1992; Thurgood and Li, 2002). However, if the word passed directly from Cham into Vietnamese without a Khmer intermediary stage, the complex onset, apocope and voice distinctions would be eliminated. Furthermore, the [au]~[o] alternation is well established in Vietnamese, and is still active today. For example, "không" as /kʰəwŋ͡m˧˧/ or /xəwŋ͡m˧˧/ meaning "no" is not dialectal according to region, but is used in free variation throughout present day Ho Chi Minh City (Lopez, 2010). Therefore, the historical chronology given by Nghia M. Vo is corroborated by linguistic evidence as NPD (Normal Phonological Development) would lead to the Cham name of Bai Gaur being adopted into Vietnamese as "Sài Gòn". The nasalization of coda sonorants such as [r] to [n] is well established in Vietnamese, and serves as a strong indication of Vietnamese "Sài Gòn" and Khmer "Prey Nôkôr" as doublets of a Cham original. Analogy usually postdates the etymological source, such as in the morphism of "Gaur" into "Nôkôr" by analogy with the Sanskrit "Nagara" as well as in the imaginative but highly speculatory attributions given above alleging Sinitic etymologies in a Southeast Asian context. Further ethnolinguistic and historical linguistic studies on this subject are currently underway. (Lopez, 2011)
The name of Prey Nôkôr, along with Cambodia's rule over the area, remained until the 1690s, when Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyen rulers of Huế to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the Mekong Delta and its surroundings. This act formally detached the area from Cambodia, which found itself too weak to intervene due to its ongoing conflict with Thailand. Prey Nôkôr was officially renamed Gia Định (chữ Hán: 嘉定), and the region was placed firmly under Vietnamese administrative control. With the city's capture by the French in 1859, the name Gia Định was discarded and replaced by the name "Saigon", which had always been the popular name. Most maps in Literary Sinitic were not updated to use the newer name until at least 1891, with the name of the city written as 嘉定 until then.
The origin of the name Gia Định has not been firmly established. One possible etymology may relate to the Chinese characters used to spell the name in chữ Hán: 嘉, which means "joyful", "auspicious", or "pretty", and 定, which means "decide" or "pacify". Another possible etymology, based on the fact that Malay speakers existed in the region during the era of Vietnamese settlement, relates the name to the Malay words ya dingin or ya hering, meaning "cool and cold" or "cold and clear", respectively—perhaps referring to the appearance of the area's many waterways.
On August 27, 1946, Viet Minh's official newspaper Cứu Quốc (National Salvation) published the article Thành Phố SÀI-GÒN Từ Nay Sẽ Đổi Tên là thành phố HỒ-CHÍ-MINH (Saigon City is Now Renamed Ho Chi Minh City). This was the first time that proclaiming the city to be renamed after Hồ Chí Minh, the first leader of North Vietnam.
On July 2, 1976, upon the formal establishment of the modern-day Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the new government eventually renamed the city.
The official name is now Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh; Thành phố is the Vietnamese word for "city". In English, this is translated as Ho Chi Minh City; in French it is translated as Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville (the circumflex and hyphens are sometimes omitted). Due to its length, the name is often abbreviated or made into an acronym; "Tp. HCM" and the acronym "TPHCM" are used interchangeably in the original Vietnamese, along with "HCM City" or "HCMC" in English and "HCMV" in French.
As noted, the now-official name commemorates North Vietnamese leader Hồ Chí Minh, who, although deceased by the time of the Fall of Saigon, was instrumental in the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. "Hồ Chí Minh" was not his original name; he was born as Nguyễn Sinh Cung, and only began using the new name around 1940. This name, which he favoured throughout his later years, combines a common Vietnamese surname (Hồ, 胡) with a given name meaning "enlightened will" (from Sino-Vietnamese 志明; Chí meaning 'will' (or spirit), and Minh meaning 'light'), in essence, meaning "bringer of light".
The kingdom of Champa, though mainly based along the coast of the South China Sea, is known to have expanded west into the Mekong Delta. The Chams gave the city the name "Baigaur" (or "Bai Gaur"), which author Jacques Népote suggests may have been a simple adaptation of the Khmer name Prey Kôr; conversely, author Nghia M. Vo implies that a Cham presence existed in the area prior to Khmer occupation, and that the name Baigaur was given to the village that would later come to be known as Prey Nokor.
The area now known as Ho Chi Minh City was part of several historical empires connected to modern-day Cambodia, including Funan, Chenla and the Khmer Empire. Formal settlements by the Khmers likely date back to the 11th century. In comparison, the first Vietnamese presence in the area dates back to the late 15th century. The gradual encroachment of the Vietnamese onto what were once Khmer lands, culminating in the creation of the unified State of Vietnam in 1949 and the associated cession of Cochinchina (known to the Khmers as Kampuchea Krom, or "Lower Cambodia") to Vietnam has resulted in significant bitterness directed towards the Vietnamese on the part of the Khmers. As a result, many of those who consider themselves Khmer nationalists would refer to Ho Chi Minh City as Prey Nôkôr, a reference to its former status as a Khmer port city.
Of the about 3 million Overseas Vietnamese, a majority left Vietnam as political refugees after 1975 as a result of the Fall of Saigon and the resulting takeover by the Communist regime, taking up residence in North America, Western Europe, and Australia. The majority are opposed to the existing government of Vietnam, and, in many cases, view Hồ Chí Minh as a dictator who ruined Vietnam by starting the war with South Vietnam. As a result, they generally do not recognize the name Hồ Chí Minh City, and will only refer to the city as Sài Gòn, the previous official name of the city.