Vietnamese name

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Traditional Vietnamese personal names generally consist of three parts, used in Eastern name order.

• A family name (normally patrilineal, although matrilineality is possible, in cases such as divorce, children of a single mother, or if a child didn't want to have the father's surname. The father's family name may be combined with the mother's family name to form a compound family name).
• A middle name (normally a single name, but some have no middle name).
• A personal name (normally single name, but some have multiple names, mostly double name).

But not every name is conformant. For example:

• Nguyễn Trãi has his family name Nguyễn and his personal name is Trãi. He does not have any middle name.
• Phạm Bình Minh has his family name Phạm and his personal name is Bình Minh (lit. 'dawn'). He does not have any middle name.
• Nguyễn Văn Quyết has his family name Nguyễn, his middle name is Văn and his personal name is Quyết (lit. 'decide').
• Nguyễn Ngọc Trường Sơn has his family name Nguyễn, his middle name is Ngọc (lit. 'pearl') and his personal name is Trường Sơn (lit. 'long mountain').
• Hoàng Phủ Ngọc Tường (a Vietnamese poet)^[1] has his family name Hoàng Phủ (natural compound family name), his middle name is Ngọc and his personal name is Tường (lit. 'deep understanding'). Sometimes his family name is confused with Hoàng.
• Trần Lê Quốc Toàn has his compound family name combined from Trần (from his father) and Lê (from his mother), his middle name is Quốc (lit. 'country') and his personal name is Toàn (lit. 'fully').

The "family name first" written order is usual throughout the East Asian cultural sphere or Sinosphere; but "middle names" are less common in Chinese, Korean names, and uncommon in Japanese names. Persons can be referred to by the whole name, the personal name, or a hierarchic pronoun, which usually connotes a degree of family relationship or kinship – but referring via the personal name is most common, as well as if degree of family relationship or kinship is unknown. In more informal contexts or in the Western world, the personal name can be written first then family name e.g. Châu Bùi or Thanh Trần.

The Vietnamese language is tonal and so are Vietnamese names. Names with the same spelling but different tones represent different meanings, which can confuse people when the diacritics are dropped, as is commonly done outside Vietnam (e.g. Đoàn ([ɗʷà:n]) vs Doãn ([zʷǎ:ˀn]), both become Doan when diacritics are omitted). Additionally, some Vietnamese names can only be differentiated via context or with their corresponding chữ Hán, such as 南 ("south") or 男 ("men", "boy"), both are read as Nam. Anyone applying for Vietnamese nationality must also adopt a Vietnamese name.^[2] Vietnamese names have corresponding Hán character adopted early on during Chinese rule. Vietnamese script is fully transliterated (romanized), because the previous script, chữ Nôm, was replaced by chữ Quốc ngữ, which was made compulsory during the French colonial era.