Địa danh

The địa danh (Chinese: 地名) variant of a Vietnamese place is the official Chinese-character name historically used by the Sinophere's administration.^[1]

Origin

The name is sometimes called Địa-danh chi Hán-văn.^[2][3][4]

It is used in contrast to the tên nôm, or vernacular name, written in locally derived Sino-Vietnamese characters unique to transcribe non-Sinic Vietnamese words.^[5][6] In the Red River Delta, the demotic Vietnamese place name often begins with "Kẻ" for example: Kẻ Mẩy (whereas the tên chữ, or Hán Việt name, is Mễ Trì), Kẻ Cót (formally Yên Quyết), Kẻ Vọng (Dịch Vọng).

Many if not most city names in Vietnam are Sino-Vietnamese, but some cities also have earlier Nôm names:

• Hà Nội (Hanoi) is Sino-Vietnamese and has had many Chinese names - Thăng Long, Đông Kinh - but the oldest name was Nôm, Kẻ Chợ, found on some early Portuguese-made maps as "Cachao".
• Lý Sơn is a Sino-Vietnamese name, but concurrently the demotic name Cù Lao Ré is also used.

Major cities with Vietnamese demotic names include:

• Huế is a fully Vietnamese demotic name: when written in chữ Nho it is named Thuận Hóa or Phú Xuân.
• Sài Gòn (Saigon) is also a demotic name: the formal tên chữ historical name in chữ Nho is Gia Định thành.
• Likewise Cam Ranh, Vũng Tàu, Phan Rang, Mỹ Tho, Cần Thơ, Kẻ Sặt, Bãi Cháy, Móng Cái, Chợ Lớn, Bến Nghé.

In these cases later Sino-Vietnamese names were derived by local Vietnamese confucian administrators with homonymic phonetic approximations (Cam Ranh: Cam Linh) or semantic translations (Bến Nghé: Ngưu chử). Some however are completely unrelated (Sông Cầu: Xuân Đài).

References