About the variations in pronunciation of certain Vietnamese words

Hoàng ~ Huỳnh 黃

Vũ ~ Võ 武

Chu ~ Châu 周

Hoa ~ Huê 花

Phúc ~ Phước 福

Cảnh ~ Kiếng 景



Hoàng ~ Huỳnh 黃

We've already known that people in Central and Southern Vietnam had to change their surname from Hoàng to Huỳnh because of Nguyễn Hoàng 阮潢 - the first Nguyễn lord in the Central/South
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_Ho%C3%A0ng
In Vietnamese tradition, birth name of rulers are "kị húy" (something to avoid mentioning). So since the birth name of the first Nguyen lord was Hoàng, people were forbidden to say it. If their family name was Hoàng, they had to twist it to Huỳnh when they said it.

However, the character was still written as 黃 (Hoàng) and not 熒 (Huỳnh) or 螢 (Huỳnh). I guess this was because the character in Nguyễn Hoàng's name was 潢 and not 黃 (Hoàng the surname), so people were allowed to keep it.

As I know, people had to avoid not only speaking the given birth name of the ruler, but also avoid writing it. If a person's name was the same as the ruler's, they had to change it. If they accidentally wrote some words with the ruler's name character in it, they would be beaten.

Today, Hoàng surname is popular in the North but rare in the South, as such Southerners mistakenly think people of Hoàng family have Chinese origin since it's rare among them. Huỳnh is popular in the Central and the South but rare in the North.



Chu ~ Châu 周
Because of Lord Nguyễn Phúc Chu 阮福淍
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_Ph%C3%BAc_Chu

Note though, not all Chu and Châu are interchangeable. Chu and châu were originally pronunciations of different characters.

Characters such as 州 (land, continent), 珠 (pearl)...are all read "châu", not chu. We say châu lục, trân châu...no one says chu lục, or trân chu


Hoa ~ Huê 花
Because of Hồ Thị Hoa - the Queen of Minh Mạng
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minh_M%E1%BA%A1ng


Phúc ~ Phước 福
Because almost all Nguyễn lords/kings got Phúc as their middle name


Cảnh ~ Kiếng 景
Because of Prince Cảnh
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho%C3%A0ng_t%...AD_C%E1%BA%A3nh




My question is...If rulers' birth names were all kị húy, how come we still keep so many pronunciations like lợi (profit, benefit ~ Lê Lợi), tráng (Trịnh Tráng), kiểm (Trịnh Kiểm), kim (Nguyễn Kim), ánh (Nguyễn Ánh)

My guess is that when the ruler died, people reverted back to the old pronunciations. Like flower today is Hoa, not Huê (I rarely see anyone say Huê). Landscape today is phong cảnh, not phong kiểng.

But in a few cases, the changes stayed for so long that it became permanent in the language of Central and Southern Vietnamese. Especially when it's something that involves a family name, the changes are more likely to become permanent.

Very interesting topic!

"My question is...If rulers' birth names were all kị húy, how come we still have keep so many pronunciations like lợi (profit, benefit ~ Lê Lợi), tráng (Trịnh Tráng), kiểm (Trịnh Kiểm), kim (Nguyễn Kim), ánh (Nguyễn Ánh)"

For Lê Lợi, maybe because he died only 6 years after becoming king, and since the war was so brutal, people had other concerns. After a chaotic war, it takes time for a civil administration to become organized and get their tentacles everywhere.

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Have there been any words (we know) that has been permanently twisted because of names of kings and lords from the North? All of examples that we know, such as the ones you mentioned, are all from the South.

I personally feel that there may have been. However,it has been too long and there wasn't the South back then to compare, so the mutation may have been entire and complete.

You didn't talk about Vu and Vo. I read your other topic about the two ( http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversio...hp/t246699.html ) and found it quite ironic that while Vu was the original of the two, Vo has pretty much eclipsed it in meaning "martial art". The remnants of Vu meaning martial art that I could recall are "vũ phu", "vũ lực", ... However, in these cases Vu has been corrupted and the meaning has rather become "getting physical/violence" instead of "martial art". Of course, Vu still plenty of other well-preserved meanings such as "rain" and "dance".

I thought the reason for Vũ to be changed into Võ was because of chúa Vũ (Vũ vương), but his real name is Nguyễn Phúc Khoát. So I'm not really sure now, would the title be kị húy too?

It's possible that there were some changes prior to the existence of the so-called Central and Southern Vietnam...

But to be honest, with the exception of the short period of Đinh and Tiền Lê, I haven't read anything about Trần kings and Lý kings forbidding people to say and write their names. Well maybe the historians didn't write it down because it was such a norm to avoid kings' names. Still, historically Lý kings and Trần kings were relatively "hiền" compared to the later periods. Maybe it got something to do with Buddhism. It seems to me Vietnamese got more aggressive in general from Hậu Lê on ward, if that's true, could it have something to do with the waning of Buddhism and the rising of orthodox Confucianism?

There's another thing to consider.

Remember that Đại Việt was practically divided into two from the 16th century to 18th century.

Ignore the period of Northern Dynasty and Southern dynasty, then the Trịnh - Nguyễn "conflict" was from 17th century to 18th century (1600 to late 1700s)

During over 150 years, laws from the North practically had no impact on people in the South. Southerners just lived by rules and laws of Nguyễn lords.

So suppose names of Trịnh lords and Lê kings were considered "kị húy" in the North, then Northerners would twist the pronunciation to something else WHILE the Southerners would keep the original pronunciations!

Therefore if that happened and if "mutations" stayed among the Northerners, then we're supposed to find different Central/Southern pronunciations for names of Lê kings and Trịnh lords.

But we don't find any.
(tráng [Trịnh Tráng], sâm [Trịnh Sâm], khải [Trịnh Khải], duy [most Lê kings had Duy as their middle name]...all stayed the same in both the North and the South]


So far all the "mutations" found are due to Nguyễn rulers' names. It makes me think whether this tên kị húy thing was just a phenomenon among the Nguyễn rulers, or at least Nguyễn rulers made a more big deal about their given name than other rulers.

My sister's name is Trâm.. is there a character for this name?

Haha That's my name. It's 簪 Trâm.