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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Via Egnatia (talk | contribs) at 15:51, 30 October 2005 (→Requested move). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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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)

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

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)

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 hate 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)

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. DHN 02:16, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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 .

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)[reply]

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)[reply]
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)[reply]


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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Discussion

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  • 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)[reply]
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