Talk:Ho Chi Minh City
|
|
210.49.196.xxx: "Fall of Saigon" is a phrase that's often bandied about at least in the United States, which is why I emphasised it as we normally do for a secondary definition. (This way, anybody trying to understand that particular phrase will be able to find it easily, especially important as the page grows.) Do you think that this is wrong? — Toby 16:44 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)
Sorry i just didn't understand what it was for! My bad sorry! -- 210.49.196.xxx
No problem ^_^. — Toby 19:11 Aug 5, 2002 (PDT)
Should this page really be under Ho Chi Minh City - it is still far more commonly called Saigon - even by the locals.
Ho Chi Minh City is the official and legal name, and the article ought to reflect that. I edited a reference to Ho Chi Minh as well. He was not only a communist leader, but also leader of the anti-colonial fighting against France, Japan and then France again. Edwin
| Contents |
photo of South Vietnamese flag
RiverofSaigon.JPG
This photo was added by User:Jimmyvanthach. It shows a South Vietnamese flag and has little relevance to the article, rather it seems to be that Jimmy is pushing his POV. Dunc|☺ 12:39, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Page move?
This page should move to Saigon. Wikipedia is supposed to use common names. - Nat Krause 07:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ho Chi Minh City is the official name. Saigon is the old name, even if it is commonly refered to between Vietnamese, the only reason is because it is shorter. To refer to Ho Chi Minh city as Saigon just because it is common is ridiculous, after all, this is a kind of encyclopedia, and encyclopedia means to be correct to its best. New Zealander call themselves Kiwi, do you just add a link to Kiwi referring to New Zealander instead of the bird itself?
- If Saigon is commonly used by Vietnamese and other people, then it is not "the old name". By "official name", I take you are referring to what the government of Vietnam says it should be called. However, Wikipedia has a policy to "use common names" -- it does not have a policy of "go by what the government says". - Nat Krause 04:16, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
So it is Wikipedia policy?? Then why didn't you move the page about Ho Chi Minh to uncle Ho and have Ho Chi Minh redirect to uncle Ho instead?? More than 10 years in Vietnam, I've never heard anybody call him "Ho Chi Minh", everybody call him "uncle Ho" (although in all official documents and media he is refered to as "president Ho Chi Minh"). Why didn't you just move United States redirect to U.S instead of making U.S redirect to United States? As far as I'm concern, US and America is being used more commonly than United States.
Searching for Saigon on Encarta (http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/search.aspx?q=Saigon&Submit2=Go), they prefer precision to common. Wikipedia is very weird because it prefer common to precision.
What that Wikipedia's policy of using the most common name possible mean is questionable. I would think it means to use the name that people will most likely used on the search box. In this case, I don't think people will search for Saigon instead of the official name Ho Chi Minh city.
- This isn't really an issue of precision. There is only one city called Saigon, just as there is only one famous person called Jimmy Carter. It might be an issue of formality. If Ho Chi Minh was almost always called "Uncle Ho" in English, then we might have his article under Uncle Ho, although I would worry that it is a little on the informal side. After all, we have an article called Mother Theresa.
- And I think it is very unlikely that "Ho Chi Minh City" will be searched for more than "Saigon". - Nat Krause 13:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Re-moved to Ho Chi Minh City
The city is names Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh in Vietnamese. Not Saigon, that was the previous name. Compare it with Sankt Peterburg and Leningrad or other cities that changed their names. If we follow the naming conventions it is the question do we use the native name Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh or the English translation Ho Chi Minh City. I would clearly prefer the latter one, it is not common tu use in English the native name. Saigon is not an option, this the old name of the city. One cannot compare this with discussions like Gdansk/Danzig, Kiyiv/Kiev or Beijing/Peking, since there it is about the translation or romanization of the name. Since there was no clear majority for the move to Saigon, I reverted the move. Electionworld 12:43, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- In what sense is "Saigon" the previous name? It's still the name that is in common usage, especially in English, but also in Vietnamese. By the way, is there a clear majority for having the page at Ho Chi Minh City? - Nat Krause 13:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- In the Netherlands Amsterdam is named by many people Mokum. But it is now way the name of the city. The name of Saigon was changed after the collapse of South Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. It is the official name. That many people still name it Saigon doesn't make it the city name. I do not know if there is a clear majority for the name Ho Chi Minh city, but you moved it to an old name without having the debate on the talk page. So therefore I reverted it to the old status. I looked some minutes ago in my english atlases and they mention Ho Chi Minh City with Saigon between brackets.
- BTW, I do not like cities to be named after communist dictators, but is the fact that the government of Vietnam did so. Electionworld 21:05, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Chu Nom
I have removed the mention to the so-called "chu nom" characters of the city. The "chu nom" in this case is nothing more than Chinese. First of all, the name "Ho Chi Minh City" has been in use only since 1976, so including a Chinese name for a Vietnamese city is absurd. Secondly even if there is a Chinese name for Saigon, it should only be included in the etymology section since this is a Vietnamese city, not a Chinese one. DHN 02:16, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
Etymology of Saigon
I am quite sceptical about this: "gòn, from the Chu Nom character for the cotton plant". Acccording to the online Chu Nom dictionary [1] (http://nomfoundation.org/nomdb/lookup.php), the only gòn is 棍 which means stick, staff, but not cotton. Cotton, on the other hand, is Chu Nom 綿, pronounced either miên, men, or . So I believe the article is wrong on that, unless someone has an explanation to offer. Hardouin 15:40, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
- As a native Vietnamese speaker, I can vouch that gòn is the Vietnamese word for "cotton" [2] (http://vdict.com/?dictionary=2&word=g%C3%B2n&typings=-1&quickm=0&autoc=0&liststring=&submit2=Lookup). The Nom lookup tool's context for the word is "bông gòn", which is "cotton-wool". The character given by the tool, when translated back to Vietnamese from Chinese, is pronounced côn, gon, or gòn[3] (http://nomfoundation.org/nomdb/nom_details.php?codepoint=68cd&img=1), which are mostly similar to gòn. Remember that Nom was never formalized, and since gòn is a native Vietnamese word, they had to make up a new character that sounds like the word. DHN 04:07, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
I checked this in detail, and I understand that the native Vietnamese word for cotton is "bông". Maybe "bông" is a cognate of the Khmer word "amboh", which would make sense since Vietnamese and Khmer are related languages. On the other hand, gòn is definitely a Chinese word (棍, pronounced gùn in Mandarin), and it means "stick". From what I understand, the native Vietnamese word bông and the Chinese loan word gòn were used together, in the sense of "cotton stick", i.e. "cotton plant", and it is probable that later, by contraction, "gòn" alone came to be understood as meaning "cotton", which is why as a native Vietnamese speaker you say it means cotton. However, the original meaning of gòn is clearly "stick". The article needs to be rephrased accordingly. Hardouin 02:02, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
- You may be right. However, in my experience, bông is mostly used in the sense of "flower" except in certain complex words where it means "cotton" (chăn bông = cotton blanket). DHN 02:13, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, according to the online Vietnamese dictionary, bông is the standard word for cotton in Vietnamese [4] (http://vdict.com/1,cotton,-1,0,0,.html). Maybe in the particular region of Vietnam where your family come from, the word gòn is favored, I don't know. In any case, I am rewriting the etymology section to better reflect the etymology of gòn. You tell me if you like it. Hardouin 11:16, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Sàigòn?
I've rarely seen the city name being called Sàigòn in Vietnamese. The only usage of it I've seen are "SàiGòn" (to save space) or among certain groups of people who want to "modernize" the language and make it more "Westernized" [5] (http://vny2k.net/). The French called it Saigon and the Vietnamese called it Sài Gòn. Before the French arrived (but after it was Vietnamized), I think the city name was written with Chinese characters, so the spelling of Sàigòn is moot. DHN 02:20, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
- According to the Vietnamese Google, there are 471,000 webpages with the spelling Sài Gòn, but only 8,940 webpages with the spelling Sàigòn. So I think that settles the matter. I am reverting to the Sài Gòn spelling in the article. Hardouin 11:11, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
- I wouldn't call the "Sài Gòn" way "traditional". I've seen it written as "Sài-gòn" in pre-1975 documents in southern Vietnam. There's no one way of writing quốc ngữ that can be considered traditional. I've seen what is now "ph" written as "f" and "c" as "k" in propaganda posters circa 1946. Vietnamese spelling have changed considerably since the beginning of the 20th century, when it was new. Ho Chi Minh's 1927 pamphlet "Đường Kách Mệnh" (Road to Revolution) would be written as "Đường Cách Mạng" in modern Vietnamese. DHN 05:35, 30 May 2005 (UTC)