Talk:Ho Chi Minh City

Template:FAOL 210.49.196.xxx: "Fall of Saigon" is a phrase that's often bandied about at least in the United States, which is why I emphasised it as we normally do for a secondary definition. (This way, anybody trying to understand that particular phrase will be able to find it easily, especially important as the page grows.) Do you think that this is wrong? — Toby 16:44 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

Sorry i just didn't understand what it was for! My bad sorry! -- 210.49.196.xxx

No problem ^_^. — Toby 19:11 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)

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Should this page really be under Ho Chi Minh City - it is still far more commonly called Saigon - even by the locals.

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Ho Chi Minh City is the official and legal name, and the article ought to reflect that. I edited a reference to Ho Chi Minh as well. He was not only a communist leader, but also leader of the anti-colonial fighting against France, Japan and then France again. Edwin

photo of South Vietnamese flag

File:RiverofSaigon.JPG

Saigon River

This photo was added by User:Jimmyvanthach. It shows a South Vietnamese flag and has little relevance to the article, rather it seems to be that Jimmy is pushing his POV. Dunc|☺ 12:39, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Page move?

This page should move to Saigon. Wikipedia is supposed to use common names. - Nat Krause 07:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ho Chi Minh City is the official name. Saigon is the old name, even if it is commonly refered to between Vietnamese, the only reason is because it is shorter. To refer to Ho Chi Minh city as Saigon just because it is common is ridiculous, after all, this is a kind of encyclopedia, and encyclopedia means to be correct to its best. New Zealander call themselves Kiwi, do you just add a link to Kiwi referring to New Zealander instead of the bird itself?

If Saigon is commonly used by Vietnamese and other people, then it is not "the old name". By "official name", I take you are referring to what the government of Vietnam says it should be called. However, Wikipedia has a policy to "use common names" -- it does not have a policy of "go by what the government says". - Nat Krause 04:16, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So it is Wikipedia policy?? Then why didn't you move the page about Ho Chi Minh to uncle Ho and have Ho Chi Minh redirect to uncle Ho instead?? More than 10 years in Vietnam, I've never heard anybody call him "Ho Chi Minh", everybody call him "uncle Ho" (although in all official documents and media he is refered to as "president Ho Chi Minh"). Why didn't you just move United States redirect to U.S instead of making U.S redirect to United States? As far as I'm concern, US and America is being used more commonly than United States.

Searching for Saigon on Encarta, they prefer precision to common. Wikipedia is very weird because it prefer common to precision.

What that Wikipedia's policy of using the most common name possible mean is questionable. I would think it means to use the name that people will most likely used on the search box. In this case, I don't think people will search for Saigon instead of the official name Ho Chi Minh city.

This isn't really an issue of precision. There is only one city called Saigon, just as there is only one famous person called Jimmy Carter. It might be an issue of formality. If Ho Chi Minh was almost always called "Uncle Ho" in English, then we might have his article under Uncle Ho, although I would worry that it is a little on the informal side. After all, we have an article called Mother Theresa.

And I think it is very unlikely that "Ho Chi Minh City" will be searched for more than "Saigon". - Nat Krause 13:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If the Wikipedia policy of using common names would mean Ho Chi Minh City should be moved to Saigon then perhaps Los Angeles should be moved to L.A. and New York City should redirect to Big Apple. In Vietnam, however, the town is perhaps most commonly referred to as TpHCM, short for Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. That is, in common usage, the name is perhaps more often written than spoken and written Vietnamese is commonly full of abbreviations. Anyhow, it is true that the term Sài Gòn is relatively often used in daily speech by Vietnamese in contemporary Vietnam. However, here it should be noted that what was once officially called Sài Gòn, or Saigon in English, is actually not the same as contemporary Ho Chi Minh City. Several suburbs and even adjacent rural districts have been added to yesteryear's Sài Gòn. Contemporary Ho Chi Minh City thus consists of a considerably larger area than Sài Gòn did. When the term Sái Gòn is used by Vietnamese in Vietnam today, it is commonly used to refer to the smaller àrea that constituted old official Sài Gòn, which is, as mentioned, something very different from contemproary Ho Chi Minh City (Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh). If Wikipedia should be about spreading knowledge and, as has been argued above, if this is really a matter of precision, than surely the text would have to be under Ho Chi Minh City and include a note on how Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City are not the same. Vichminh 19:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? In my experience, people outside of Saigon usually refer to the whole city as "Saigon", rather than just the parts that constitute the former city. Only pedantic bureaucrats would use it that way. DHN 20:18, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess I am as sure as you are. At least I do not disagree with your description. Sài Gòn is used today to refer to the "whole city" as you say. The point here is that Ho Chi Minh City includes areas not commonly thought of in terms of "the city". It was not only the official Saigon what was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 but Cholon, Gia Dinh and Saigon. The old Saigon was by no means a small area but Ho Chi Minh City is vast - 2.095 km² to be exact. (For a comparison, according to Wikipedia the whole of New York City covers 1,214 km² and only 800 km² if you do not count water areas). About 90% of Ho Chi Minh City consists of what would be described as rural rather than urban. I would not dare to deny that the term Sài Gòn could at times be used in reference to the whole of Ho Chi Minh City including all of its 24 districts, but I would think this is not common at all. Today even Cu Chi is part of Ho Chi Minh City but I do not think many people, Vietnamese or foreigners, think of Cu Chi as Saigon. Pedantic or not, I would argue that an encyclopedia text on the whole of Ho Chi Minh City, which I assume the text is meant to be about, should be found under the entry Ho Chi Minh City and nowhere else, which of course is not to say the info on the common usage of the term Saigon should be left out. Vichminh 21:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

By the way, are you aware of the Vietnamese Wikipedia? We've been growing by leaps and bounds in the past year, but be still need more contributors ;-) DHN 22:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for asking, I do know the Vietnamese Wikipedia. You are doing a fantastic job with that. The entry for Ho Chi Minh City is in many ways better than this English one. Unfortunately my Vietnamese is not at a high enough level to write any individual entries, but I will try to contribute some bits and pieces via the discussions. Vichminh 08:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

While I don't support moving the page anywhere, I think Saigon is used by most Vietnamese, not just "many". Sites in Vietnam using "Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh" (203,000), sites in Vietnam using "Sài Gòn" (387,000) (this difference is even more pronounced if you include all countries), sites in Vietnam containing "Saigon" (247,000), and containing "Ho Chi Minh City" (128,000). As you're aware, written Vietnamese is more formal than spoken. "Tp. Hồ Chí Minh" is more popular than "Sài Gòn", but most of the pages I found contain postal addresses or are official names of entities. DHN 17:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, your Internet survey of course gives an indication. However, it can hardly be regarded as decisive; after all, sites are not people. I would object to the categorical statement of deciding most, rather than many, Vietnamese use the term Saigon instead of Tp.HCM. The reasons are many. One is that, unless some truly hard evidence showing closer to 50 million Vietnamese use Saigon and not Tp.HCM at all times can be presented then it is more accurate to settle for a less categorical phrasing. Another related argument would be that "many" does not necessarily mean "very few" - it could mean a majority but we just don't know for sure. If one uses the term "most" than it would have to mean the majority of all Vietnamese. Another more crucial argument in my opinion would be that to my experience many, perhaps most people (me, for one) use both Saigon and Tp.HCM depending on context and therefore it would be misleading to claim most people use the term Saigon instead of Tp.HCM. That is, it would be better to say something along the lines of "In many (or most if it can be proved beyond doubt) situations Vietnamese still use the term Saigon for Tp.HCM." Yet another argument is of course the one I have already outlined above, i.e., that few use the term Saigon to refer to Cu Chi (or other more rural areas of Ho Chi Minh City). This argument of course holds for foreigners too. I mean, very few if any international tourists would say they went on a "city tour" when they take the tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels. In the History section it now reads "Generally, the term Saigon refers only to District One, the central district of Hồ Chí Minh City." I think here "District One" could be changed to "city center" or "the urban districts" or something along those lines, but I do insist it is most accurate to hold on to a distinction between Saigon and Tp.HCM as, I argue, this would be the best and most inclusive reflection of a multifaceted social reality. One major reason why I think it is good to stick with a more open and less categorical phrasing (as long as it finds support in social reality of course) is that that for some there are obvious political reasons why the term Saigon should categorically be used instead the official term of the current regime. Vichminh 19:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Strange... I just re-did your Internet survey (just followed your hyperlinks) and got very different figures. "Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh"=430,000. "Sài Gòn"=665,000. "Saigon"=445,000. ""Tp. Hồ Chí Minh"=904,000. I also did a search on "Tp. HCM", which you left out, and got no less than 1,930,000 hits. And I did a search on "HCMC" and got 205,000, and a search on "SGN" which got 19,500 hits. In my survey various forms of the term Ho Chi Minh City thus got 3,469,000 while various forms of Saigon got 1,129,500. Slightly more than three times more hits on various forms of Ho Chi Minh City then. Yet I still believe this cannot be regarded as anything other than an indication. It seems very probable that it actually says something technical about how Google works than about how Saigon is commonly referred to. Furthermore, again, we do not know from this that every single one of my 1,129,500 hits of Saigon is interchangeble with the actual Ho Chi Minh City including all of the rural districts of Hóc Môn, Bình Chánh, Củ Chi, Nhà Bè and Cần Giờ. Anyhow, at the end of the day, Internet sites are not people. Vichminh 20:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

If Ho Chi Minh City is really a different and much larger place than Saigon, perhaps we should have two separate articles for them? I'm not sure in what sense they're the same thing. - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 19:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nat Kraus, they should change it from ho chi minh city to Saigon apollofreak05^(Talk!) 15:30, 08 August 2007 (UTC)

• As a Vietnamese mix, was born in Vietnam and lived here in nearly 20 years. I know that mostly Vietnamese poeple (from North to South) and especially Saigoners and Southern people still calling this city as Sài Gòn because it was original name in 300 years. The second reason that is mostly Western countries are still using dual names of this city as Sai Gon and Ho Chi Minh City at the same time, but as I can see that mostly non-Vietnamese people prefer Sai Gon to HCMC. The third reason that is a Communist copy: That is Saint Petersburg, under ruling of Soviet Communists, they have changed its original and hundred year name to Leningrad (Lenin city). But after 1991, predominantly city people have agreed to changed its holy name back. And the fourth reason: The name of Sai Gon is much popular and famous because many tourists have compared the beauty of Sai Gon as "the Pearl of the Far East" or "Paris of the East" (from French colonial period to before 1975). I support the idea of Nat Krause.

Angelo De La Paz (talk) 07:14, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Re-moved to Ho Chi Minh City

The city is names Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh in Vietnamese. Not Saigon, that was the previous name. Compare it with Sankt Peterburg and Leningrad or other cities that changed their names. If we follow the naming conventions it is the question do we use the native name Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh or the English translation Ho Chi Minh City. I would clearly prefer the latter one, it is not common tu use in English the native name. Saigon is not an option, this the old name of the city. One cannot compare this with discussions like Gdansk/Danzig, Kiyiv/Kiev or Beijing/Peking, since there it is about the translation or romanization of the name. Since there was no clear majority for the move to Saigon, I reverted the move. Electionworld 12:43, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In what sense is "Saigon" the previous name? It's still the name that is in common usage, especially in English, but also in Vietnamese. By the way, is there a clear majority for having the page at Ho Chi Minh City? - Nat Krause 13:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In the Netherlands Amsterdam is named by many people Mokum. But it is now way the name of the city. The name of Saigon was changed after the collapse of South Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. It is the official name. That many people still name it Saigon doesn't make it the city name. I do not know if there is a clear majority for the name Ho Chi Minh city, but you moved it to an old name without having the debate on the talk page. So therefore I reverted it to the old status. I looked some minutes ago in my english atlases and they mention Ho Chi Minh City with Saigon between brackets.

BTW, I do not like cities to be named after communist dictators, but is the fact that the government of Vietnam did so. Electionworld 21:05, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Electionworld, before you call Ho Chi Minh a dictator, perhaps you should research a little bit more yourself. Calling a national hero a "dictator" is rather offensive. I take it that you know quite a lot about the history of Vietnam before you made such offensive statement? If so then perhaps you know that it is South Vietnam with support from the U.S refused to hold an election fearing that Ho Chi Minh might win? Perhaps you know that Ho Chi Minh won Vietnam its independence from the French colonial? Perhaps you know that he died in 1969, 6 years before the ultimate defeat of South Vietnam? Knowing that you do involve in politics and much older than me, I take it that you know much more about world history than I do. If so then perhaps you know that Yasser Arafat, Chiang Kai Shek,... (leaders of countries which constantly under threat from other nations) are all president of their respective countries for life? Even among Vietnamese (that is both North and South Vietnamese, living oversea or in country), whether Ho Chi Minh is a communist or a nationalist using communism as a way to gain independence and reunite Vietnam is contested, i suggest you avoid this kind of offensive statement.--lt2hieu2004 28 June 2005 04:26 (UTC)

Indeed, it appears true that calling Nguyen Tat Thanh a "dictator" is offensive to many—although for the sake of completeness, it may also be noted that among many of my Vietnamese relatives and friends, calling him a "hero" is perceived as at least equally offensive :).

Suffice to say, there remains considerable controversy regarding both current opinions as well as historical perspective regarding the man (although I'm a bit mystified why you chose Chiang and Arafat as comparisons when you criticized the term "dictator" as applied to Nguyen—considering that most regard both of those figures as clear examples of dictators, as well—I suppose you were aware of the potential irony). —Ryanaxp June 28, 2005 14:03 (UTC)

I chose Chiang Kai Shek & Yasser Arafat to compare with Ho Chi Minh because the majority of people who consider Ho Chi Minh a dictator is just because they hate communism, I doubt any one can provide any hard evidence of his "dictatorness". I have yet to know of any country which change their leaders while under threat from other nations, as for Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam was clearly under threat from South Vietnam with support from U.S, moreover, he once said U.S was not Vietnam biggest threat but China (because we have 1000 years of war with them), and indeed we do have war with them twice in 1979 & in the 1980s. I suppose you know what I meant by now, Taiwan was constantly under threat from China then, Palestine situation is even worse. Vietnam, Taiwan & Palestine are all considerably much weaker than U.S, China & Israel.

To me, Ho Chi Minh is a hero because I don't care what is his true motive, the fact is that he gained Vietnam independence from the colonial French & the fascist Japanese and later reunited Vietnam. To a lot of people, calling him a hero is offensive, indeed. However, I'm talking about the majority of people. Nobody is loved by everybody, even Horatio Nelson with the "Nelson touch" is much hated by a lot of people because of his affair Emma Hamilton. All I want to say is that because someone hates Ho Chi Minh doesn't give him the right to make such statement without any hard evidence. I have seen some evidences suggest that he is a communist, not a nationalist, but I have yet to come along any evidence that he is a dictator.

About your Vietnamese friends who may find calling Ho Chi Minh a dictator offensive, I'm sorry if I offended them. However, living in NZ & UK for quite a long time, I have come to a conclusion that there are 3 groups of Vietnamese who considered Ho Chi Minh a dictator. The first group are people who have never come back to Vietnam after 1975 (& especially the period after 1990) - that is people who have never live in a socialist country, this group make up 80%. The second group consists of people who have never been to a non-communist country - that is people who can not compare between Vietnam & other capitalist countries, this group make up 19% of people who are anti - Ho Chi Minh. The last group, people who have come back to Vietnam recently but considered the Vietnam War Ho Chi Minh attempt to turn Vietnam communist at the cost of his own people, 1% of anti - Ho Chi Minh people are in this group. --lt2hieu2004 28 June 2005 23:08 (UTC)

I think it should stay at Ho Chi Minh City. For example: most people refer to Myanmar as Burma -- but entering Burma re-directs to Myanmar. Many countries don't even recognize the country's name as Myanmar. Since in this case we are referring to an official name rather than a common name, I think precedent would suggest Ho Chi Minh City. The Invisible Man 00:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

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Ho Chi Minh City is the official name and should be the title of the article. The name SaiGon is used not because people(including me) dont like the official name, it's just that it's shorter and easier to pronounce.

Agree - keep as Ho Chi Minh City. It is virtually identical to what 'Saigon' is, unless you want to be finicky and define it according to city limits. Incidentally, you will not find any companies with HCM in their names (no "Ho Chi Minh City Burger Bar"). Saigon is considered neutral and it isn't politically incorrect (in the eyes of commie aparachicks) to use the word 'Saigon' informally. Kransky 13:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Chu Nom

I have removed the mention to the so-called "chu nom" characters of the city. The "chu nom" in this case is nothing more than Chinese. First of all, the name "Ho Chi Minh City" has been in use only since 1976, so including a Chinese name for a Vietnamese city is absurd. Secondly even if there is a Chinese name for Saigon, it should only be included in the etymology section since this is a Vietnamese city, not a Chinese one. [[User:DHN|DHN]] 02:16, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Etymology of Saigon

I am quite sceptical about this: "gòn, from the Chu Nom character for the cotton plant". Acccording to the online Chu Nom dictionary [1], the only gòn is 棍 which means stick, staff, but not cotton. Cotton, on the other hand, is Chu Nom 綿, pronounced either miên, men, or mền. So I believe the article is wrong on that, unless someone has an explanation to offer. Hardouin 15:40, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

As a native Vietnamese speaker, I can vouch that gòn is the Vietnamese word for "cotton" [2]. The Nom lookup tool's context for the word is "bông gòn", which is "cotton-wool". The character given by the tool, when translated back to Vietnamese from Chinese, is pronounced côn, gon, or gòn[3], which are mostly similar to gòn. Remember that Nom was never formalized, and since gòn is a native Vietnamese word, they had to make up a new character that sounds like the word. DHN 04:07, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

I checked this in detail, and I understand that the native Vietnamese word for cotton is "bông". Maybe "bông" is a cognate of the Khmer word "amboh", which would make sense since Vietnamese and Khmer are related languages. On the other hand, gòn is definitely a Chinese word (棍, pronounced gùn in Mandarin), and it means "stick". From what I understand, the native Vietnamese word bông and the Chinese loan word gòn were used together, in the sense of "cotton stick", i.e. "cotton plant", and it is probable that later, by contraction, "gòn" alone came to be understood as meaning "cotton", which is why as a native Vietnamese speaker you say it means cotton. However, the original meaning of gòn is clearly "stick". The article needs to be rephrased accordingly. Hardouin 02:02, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

You may be right. However, in my experience, bông is mostly used in the sense of "flower" except in certain complex words where it means "cotton" (chăn bông = cotton blanket). DHN 02:13, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, according to the online Vietnamese dictionary, bông is the standard word for cotton in Vietnamese [4]. Maybe in the particular region of Vietnam where your family come from, the word gòn is favored, I don't know. In any case, I am rewriting the etymology section to better reflect the etymology of gòn. You tell me if you like it. Hardouin 11:16, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Gòn is the word for cotton. It is not colloquial. I have always heard it referred to in this way and used gòn in reference to cotton. The fact that you find it in a dictionary reference as one way does not make it definitive. If you go back to your dictionary source and do a simple lookup on gòn you will find it does mean cotton. http://vdict.com/?word=g%C3%B2n&dictionary=2 .

Isn't it pointless to start the article with a long discussion of a name which the article isn't about? It starts off with "Origin of the name", but one sentence is devoted to the origin of its present name. The etymology section ought to go.Mangoe 01:23, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The city is still known to most people as Saigon. The etymology of its official name is a no-brainer. DHN 02:52, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Then perhaps the etymology belongs as a much-deemphasized note under the history of the name changes. As it is, it seems irrelevant, not to mention out of proportion. Mangoe 04:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Sàigòn?

I've rarely seen the city name being called Sàigòn in Vietnamese. The only usage of it I've seen are "SàiGòn" (to save space) or among certain groups of people who want to "modernize" the language and make it more "Westernized" [5]. The French called it Saigon and the Vietnamese called it Sài Gòn. Before the French arrived (but after it was Vietnamized), I think the city name was written with Chinese characters, so the spelling of Sàigòn is moot. DHN 02:20, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

According to the Vietnamese Google, there are 471,000 webpages with the spelling Sài Gòn, but only 8,940 webpages with the spelling Sàigòn. So I think that settles the matter. I am reverting to the Sài Gòn spelling in the article. Hardouin 11:11, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't call the "Sài Gòn" way "traditional". I've seen it written as "Sài-gòn" in pre-1975 documents in southern Vietnam. There's no one way of writing quốc ngữ that can be considered traditional. I've seen what is now "ph" written as "f" and "c" as "k" in propaganda posters circa 1946. Vietnamese spelling have changed considerably since the beginning of the 20th century, when it was new. Ho Chi Minh's 1927 pamphlet "Đường Kách Mệnh" (Road to Revolution) would be written as "Đường Cách Mạng" in modern Vietnamese. DHN 05:35, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Sài Gòn are 2 seperate words in Vietnamese, and should be written so.

Saigon is better.

Requested move

Ho Chi Minh City -> Hồ Chí Minh City Cultural imperialism to use German and Polish diacritics and not Vietnamese double diacritics. See also Talk:Ho Chi Minh

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Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Oppose: the city name is never written with diacritics in English. Even the official website for the city uses the non-diacritics version. DHN 02:05, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Never is too strong. I get about 15,000 English Google hits. The stripped version is certainly much more common, though. It is perhaps also worth mentioning that some other .vn government websites use diacritics in the city name. [6] - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:32, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support I am curious though, who requested to move this, how come that user is not voting? Gryffindor 12:39, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

  It's normally assumed that the person who requested a move, in this case an anon, is in favour of it - they don't normally have to list themselves in the voting section too (although it does help if they sign the nomination...) sjorford #£@%&$?! 16:07, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose En:Wikipedia is supposed to be in English. Neither ồ nor í are English characters. --Henrygb 21:18, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • We already have another article on a capital city with í: Reykjavík. I think this is what the person proposing the move sees as an inconsistency. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:32, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose This is an instance of WP:Point. English usage should prevail; when you have convinced the community of English speakers, WP will change. (For what it's worth, I oppose the imposition of German and Polish spellings too.) Septentrionalis 22:36, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think this is an attempt to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. It seems like a good faith proposal to me. It is also in line with a long-running survey on WP:UE on the use of diacritics in place names. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:36, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose: on the En-Wikipedia, stick with the spelling used most often in the English language. Jonathunder 14:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• STRONGLY oppose this absurd idea that using the English name is "imperialism". CDThieme 17:28, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Neutral. I can see arguments both ways but while we have Mexico City rather than México City I suppose we can live with the current location of this name without being too imperialistic :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 20:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. The "City" part of the name makes this an English name. I would have supported a move if it had been about some small town little known outside Vietnam. up◦land 09:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Use English, not a crazy character I can't even see on my computer. Via Egnatia
• Oppose. Mainly because of Uppland's reasoning (the name is clearly Englishised). Also because of font concerns. Eugene van der Pijll 22:25, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Use English spelling for a place that has an English version of the name. – Axman (☏) 04:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Use English on the English-language Wikipedia, jguk 09:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. What jguk said, with a lot of sympathy for Via Egnatia's point, as well. FWIW, I would oppose Lech Wałęsa over Lech Walesa, Reykjavík over Reykjavik, and most any other use of diacritics, as they are almost NEVER the 'most common' name used by native English speakers. Montreal and Quebec, for example, both lost their diacritics for that reason. Niteowlneils 05:39, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose This is an English Wikipedia entry. In English, we rarely use diacritics. Also, the name of the city in English is "Saigon" although "Ho Chi Minh City" (the translation of Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) is also generally understood.Timothy Horrigan (talk) 05:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

• A note on Haukurth's point on Mexico City. I would have thought Mexico City would be at Ciudad de México if we were going to use the native spelling, so if Ho Chi Minh City were to use native spelling then it would be at Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. These two native spellings are just not used in English, so we use the English versions, which do not use diacritics in the names. English does have a name for this city, so why use the native spelling/name over the English one? Mark 12:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

We use English names where they exist (as in Mexico City) and native names where an English name doesn't exist (as in Kópavogur). - Haukur Þorgeirsson 14:38, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Request not fulfilled due to lack of consensus. Rob Church ^Talk 12:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

It looks to me as if there was a consensus - not to move to the diacritics form. --Henrygb 00:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Copyedit

There seems to be plenty of random hyphons inserted everywhere. I removed two but there's more. Skinnyweed 18:19, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I removed most, if not all of them. Sir Vicious 22:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Political and Administrative System

Someone that really understands the city government, please check my changes for that section - thanks Crum375 19:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I need more imiges

More About the Name of the City

Although there is (or soon will be) a Vietnamese Wikipedia... this is the English Wikipedia, which is written in English, which happens to be a language where diacritical marks are rarely used. So we are free to leave off the diacritical marks, I should think. We are also free to use a different name for Saigon, Vietnam from what the locals use in their own language... just like we do with Roma, Baile Atha Cliath, Mumbai, Ciudad de México, Moskva, etc. If it's OK to refer to Ho Chi Minh City rather than the more authentic Thanh Ho Chi Minh... why isn't it just as OK to refer to the name we English-speaking know it best by, i.e., Saigon? Timothy Horrigan (talk) 05:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

According to WP:UE, the article name should be the way it would appear in a reliable source, such as another encyclopedia or other reference work. Pretty much any English-language newspaper or reference work will describe the post-1975 city as Ho Chi Minh City. But it's certainly ironic that the English-speaking world follows Hanoi's rules more obediently than either the Chinese or the Vietnamese themselves, both of whom still call the city Saigon. The New York Times and the Associated Press are the ones who decide these things, at least when they are not off fabricating massacres in Korea and Iraq. Kauffner (talk) 16:53, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

History

There is no mention of the Japanese occupation of Saigon in the History section. I thought Vietnam was invaded in WW ll ?

84.130.85.62 14:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Merger of People's Committee Article

There is a separate article on the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee which is an orphaned stub - not even this article links to it. I have proposed merging that article into the Political and Administrative System section of this article. The People's Committee article could become a redirect to that section. Alternatively, maybe there is enough information about the political and administrative system to merge that section AND the People's Committee article into a new article. PubliusFL 01:00, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. Per your request. --ShakataGaNai (talk) 00:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Images

I removed two images - image:Saigon-hcmc hotels.jpg and image:Hcm center.jpg - that were added to the infobox at the beginning of the article. The infobox doesn't seem like the right place for these images, and they were far too large, making the infobox overlap much of the article. I would have moved them farther down the page, but there's no information about what the images depict. Also there is no copyright information for the images. If anyone knows what is shown in these images, please include a caption if you re-insert them in the article. PubliusFL 19:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep as separate article!

Keep separate! Main HCMC article is bound to grow too big sooner or later. Tabletop 02:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Hong Kong article is even bigger :D. Magnifier (talk) 20:11, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Etymology

The article tells me far more than I'll ever want to know about the etymology of the name. Please cut this back to a single senstence at most. PiCo 11:59, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Khmer name

This idea is wrong: Prey Nokor means “god”, or “heavenly” in Khmer (Prey = “god”; Nokor = “empire,city”, from Sanskrit nagara). The editor is confusing "Prey" that in Khmer is "Forest" with "Preah" that is "heavenly, God...". The translation would be "The city of the forest". For this reason the Cambodian king gave the place to Vietnam because for him "it was just a forest" = nuh tae prey ... El Viajero Paisa (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 15:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

the famous Dr. Keng, Vansak

If Dr. Keng, Vansak is famous, then why does the entry need to state that he is famous? Stating that someone or something is famous suggests that, in fact, it or they are not. If they are famous then we don't need to be told -- if we need to be told then they are not famous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.95.241.179 (talk) 19:56, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

LACK OF NEUTRALITY IN ARTICLE

Someone please assist. This article is a disaster and is in huge need of re-writing to fit neutrality. There are parts of the article, such as the "Transportaiotn" section where it says quote: "enforcement of traffic law is a joke. Drivers can still be seen driving the wrong way up a one way street or ignoring red lights. "

That piece of information is useless. anyone who has been to a third world country knows that this is commonplace in some lands. (Dominican Republic, Philippines and India are some I have persoally seen with my eyes)

This article is in servere need of revising. I will not remove the above caption until administrators can see for themselves Kcuello (talk) 17:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Traffic laws in Saigon are certainly not a joke. They are quiet serious and they have been painstakingly codified. The issue here is that the original contributor is inarticulate. It would have been more accurate to state that traffic laws are not enforced or traffic laws are loosely interpreted, but claiming that they are a “joke” is yet more evidence that Wikipedia is not of an encyclopedic standard. The professionals over at Encyclopedia Britannica would never have been so sloppily inarticulate.

Media

In the media section we find this snippet in between semicolons:

; the highest circulation newspaper in Vietnam;

I'm thinking one of these should be a comma... but which newspaper has the highest circulation: Tuoi Tre (Youth), Nguoi Lao Dong (Labourer), or Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Saigon)? —dragfyre 17:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Tuoi Tre. DHN (talk) 17:38, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok - I made this change in the aforementioned section: "...Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Saigon) and its Chinese, investment and finance, sports, evening and weekly editions; Tuoi Tre (Youth), the highest circulation newspaper in Vietnam;..."—dragfyre 20:28, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Chữ Nôm?

Why is the article full of chữ Nôm transliterations? Chữ Nôm is basically a dead language. Vietnamese schools don't even teach it anymore. It's like giving Latin transliterations in an article about a modern European city. Actually it's even worse than that, if this is to be believed: Scholars who can read and understand chữ Nôm today are almost extinct. Kauffner (talk) 06:35, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Some editors with some affinity for Chinese characters insist on adding them despite it not being used for a hundred years. See articles about Vietnamese provinces and you'd see the battle between people who insist on adding them and those who want them off. DHN (talk) 07:29, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not full of chu Nom transliterations. Chu Nom is only found in the historial section of the city's name, so I think it's revelant enough in order to explain the name's origin. Pieuvre (talk) 18:54, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

"Hồ Chí Minh" as the city's name

I noticed that Vietnamese radio nowadays calls the city Hồ Chí Minh. I don't know when they changed it, but at one time "Hồ Chí Minh" referred strictly to the person and city had to be referred to as Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. At five syllables, this is probably one of the longest city names in the world. Kauffner (talk) 02:56, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Obviously you haven't heard of Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit or El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de la Porciúncula. DHN (talk) 03:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Chợ Rẫy Hospital

I find really hard to believe that Chợ Rẫy Hospital has "close to international standards quality," as the article claims. They examined my eyes with an obviously broken flashlight, didn't bother to check the gauge when they took my blood pressure, and messed up my chest X-ray (and didn't bother to take another). It was the Keystone Docs. It's supposed to be one the best hospitals in Vietnam. I don't want to think about what non-best ones are like. Just don't get sick if you come here! Sorry, that's a bad joke. The Franco-Vietnamese Hospital really is up to international standards. International SOS Vietnam also has a good reputation, although its just a clinic. Kauffner (talk) 14:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)