Nguyen: A Surname History (Paperback)

Description

Nguyen: A Surname History — Volume 42 of The Surname Histories Series. The name without a word — the Sino-Vietnamese reading of the Chinese character 阮 (ruǎn): not a meaningful Vietnamese word at all, but a name written by dynasties — adopted out of loyalty, granted as an honor, forced by name taboo (the Lý clan compelled to become Nguyễn in 1232, recorded in the Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư; the Lê compelled under Gia Long and Minh Mạng), carried by nine lords and thirteen kings, 1802–1945. NGUYEN stands No. 38 in the 2010 U.S. Census with 437,645 bearers — No. 57 in 2000 (310,125), a +41.1% rise (+127,520 bearers), nineteen ranks gained — composition (official 2010 Census surname table): 96.45% Asian and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 0.95% White, 0.12% Black, 1.83% two or more races, 0.03% American Indian/Alaska Native, 0.63% Hispanic — sitting directly behind Torres at #37 and completing the series’ eighteen-book running echo (Lee #21 → Pérez #22 → Thompson #23 → White #24 → Harris #25 → Sánchez #26 → Clark #27 → Ramírez #28 → Lewis #29 → Robinson #30 → Walker #31 → Young #32 → Allen #33 → King #34 → Wright #35 → Scott #36 → Torres #37 → Nguyen #38), eighteen consecutive volumes at eighteen consecutive ranks. The signature story is Nguyễn Thị Bình (b. 1927) — the only woman to sign the 1973 Paris Peace Accords (January 27, 1973, for the Provisional Revolutionary Government), the PRG’s foreign minister 1969–1976, at the Avenue Kléber table through the 1968–1973 negotiations alongside Lê Đức Thọ and Henry Kissinger — told in full and framed honestly, in prose only: she is living, and no likeness of any real person appears anywhere in this volume. The heraldry is framed honestly too: Vietnamese families have no coat-of-arms tradition, and the crest-shop “Nguyen family crests” are commercial fabrications — the book shows what the imperial house actually held instead: the Hoàng Đế chi bảo gold seal of 1823, the five-clawed imperial dragon, the Đông Sơn bronze drum, and the honest empty plinth. The bearers — Hồ Chí Minh, born Nguyễn Sinh Cung, as Nguyễn Ái Quốc; Nguyễn Cao Kỳ; Nguyễn Du, the national poet of the Tale of Kiều — are honored in prose; and a gazetteer maps the name from Huế to Little Saigon.