My American passport says Cuong Quoc Pham and some call me Coo. However my true given name is Pham Quoc Cuong (correctly spelled with accents above and for audio pronunciation, click on the image name above). For many Vietnamese Americans, the full name becomes “lost in translation” in the American paperwork for various reasons.First, the lost of the accent destroys the meaning of the name. Vietnamese names are rooted as actual conversational and written words in the modern daily Viet language. It’s like naming your children “Strong Will”, “Righteousness”, “Flower”, or “Dance”. So once the accent disappears, the name literally changes meaning or losing all meaning.
The Vietnamese name always begins with the last name in deference to family origins. However the last name has to a tendency to lack in originality and most coming from ancestral Chinese clans. Nguyen is the overwhelming favorite at about 40% of the population while Tran, Le, and Pham make up the rest of the majority of family names. The remaining last names number up to 300 more which all barely hit the Richter scale.
As for the middle name, it does not have the same sense as the American middle name. Many Vietnamese have zero to four so-called middle names usually deriving from names from their ancestors or relatives. In the past, the middle name served as a gender or generational marker. For instance all my brothers share the same middle name. People can also call me Quoc Cuong, making Quoc more of an extension of my first name than truly a middle name.
Though the last name has strong family significance in the Vietnamese culture, individuals are addressed by their first name in all situations: school, work, family, etc. This seemingly informal greeting of authority and elders stems from the homogeneity of the last name. That is, saying “Dr. Pham” would be less specific than saying “Dr. Cuong.” The use of pronouns before the name serves to address formality in greetings.
Yet, the biggest reason for the “lost in translation” underlies the difficulty of the Vietnamese language. It is sometimes painstaking to teach people my first name. Thus many Vietnamese Americans change their first name or produce odd nicknames like mine to assimilate into the American culture.
So what would be a good American name for me? Richard?
