【翻譯練習】為何四成越南人姓阮
Why 40% of Vietnamese People Have the Same Last Name
作者：Dan Nosowitz
來源：https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nguyen-name-common-vietnam
美國最普遍的姓氏是史密斯 (Smith)。2010 年人口普查顯示，近 0.8% 的美國人姓史密斯。越南最普遍的姓氏則是阮，估計有三到四成的越南人姓阮。越南前十四大姓氏的人口總數，就占全國人口九成以上。那麼美國前十四大姓氏占全國人口的比例呢？不到 6%。
在美國這樣的移民國家，姓氏有舉足輕重的地位。姓氏會透露你的來歷 (可以一直追溯到出身的村莊)、你的遠祖做什麼職業、祖先遷居至此已過了多久、你的宗教、以及你的社會地位。
阮這個姓氏，頂多就透露你是個越南人。基本上，姓阮的人很難回推一或二個世代以上的家族史，把名字丟搜尋引擎，也沒辦法找到太多跟自身有關的資訊。
美國和越南姓氏背後隱藏的訊息，呈現如此大的差異，這說明了姓氏的奇異之處：在世界大多數地方，姓氏竟然只是近代的產物，而且姓氏在很多地方根本不怎麼重要，越南就是一個例子。
越南人冠上姓氏，可以追溯到西元前 111 年，此時越南開始成為中國漢朝的領土，開啟了越南長達千年隸屬中國的歷史。(西元 939 年，越南才逐出中國勢力，自立王國，在此之前曾有幾次短暫的獨立運動。) 由於缺乏文字紀錄的關係，現已無法得知西元前 111 年以前的越南人如何使用姓名。事實上，就連「Vietnam」這個名稱都取自中文，「viet」是中文「越」字的越語拼音，「越」指的是位於中國雲南省東南方的族群。
在中國統治以前，越南人很可能沒有姓氏 (或者應該說家族姓氏 [family name]，畢竟在越南和其他很多地方，姓氏並不是像英語的 last name 那樣，放在全名的最後面)。不過這一點也不足為奇，因為 18 世紀以前，世界上大多數地方並未使用姓氏。最常見的是「父名」(patronymic name)，這代表你的全名實際上翻譯起來可能會變成「史提夫，鮑伯之子」(Steve son of Bob)。父名只能看出最接近的上一代，此命名法通行於世界許多地方，尤其是斯堪地那維亞半島和中東地區。(注意結尾有「-sson」，或是包含「Ben」或「Ibn.」在內的姓氏，這些都屬於父名。)
很多地方一直都對姓氏這回事沒有概念，除非那個地方被有使用姓氏的地方給征服。這樣的征服者包括羅馬人、諾曼人、中國人、以及晚近的西班牙人、葡萄牙人、德國人和美國人。在越南引進姓氏觀念的，正是中國人。
中國人冠上姓氏已有千餘年歷史，有時從姓氏可以看出一個人的職業、社會地位、或少數族群血統。中國還沒統治越南以前，中國人已經有一套複雜的姓氏制度，用意很簡單：徵稅。夏威夷大學馬諾阿分校印度-太平洋語學系和越語學系兼任教授史蒂芬．歐哈洛 (Stephen O'Harrow) 說：「在中國的殖民統治下，中國人往往會給殖民地人民分派姓氏，方便記錄稅務。中國人只用少數幾個姓氏分派給轄下的人民。」
基本上，中國人 (以及之後的羅馬人、諾曼人) 擴張領土，收服當地人民，這些征服者需要設法對被征服者登記造冊，才能向其課稅。但是，被征服之處大多沒有使用姓氏的習慣，實難妥善監督被征服者。當同一村有十幾人叫作「容」，有人稱他們「容叔」、「容哥」，此時該如何確認你徵稅的對象，就是你要的那個名叫容的人呢？
所以，中國人就開始給越南人冠上姓氏。姓氏的分派相當隨機，不過多半取自中國姓，或是從中國姓衍伸出的越南字，例如越南的阮姓 (越南語拼音 Nguyen) 即是源自中國的阮姓 (漢語拼音 Ruan)。歐哈洛說：「據我猜測，較高階級的中國統治者，可能把自己的名字分派給轄下的人民當作姓氏。」這種事情屢見不鮮：從菲律賓 (超多菲律賓人有西班牙姓) 到美國 (美國黑人的姓，常是其當過奴隸的祖先所屬的主人名字) 和印度的果阿邦 (曾受葡萄牙殖民)，帝國主義統治者往往會將自身名字冠予被征服者之上。
阮字的由來，或許是古代中國同樣名叫「阮」的邦國，也或許是同樣名叫「阮」的一種狀似魯特琴的樂器，實情已無從得知。無論如何，似乎很可能是有些中階的中國官員，為了得知到底有哪些人住在其新征服的越南領土上，索性下令該地居民一律改姓阮。
對了，不妨花點時間討論「Nguyen」的發音。假如你查詢一下，會發現 Nguyen 有幾十種自稱正確的發音。這些發音都沒有唸錯，但是主要問題是，並沒有唯一一個正確的發音。越南有好幾種方言，尤以南方和北方差異最為明顯。南越的方言往往會省略一些聲音，所以 Nguyen 唸起來就像是「Win」或「Wen」。北越則會保留聲音，於是 Nguyen 唸起來比較像「N'Win」或「Nuh'Win」，而且你要盡可能用一個音節的長度發出這些音。
越南人的流亡遷徙，又使得發音這件事變得更加複雜。由於早期的同化政策，帶有洋風的姓名在越南頗為常見 (你可能認識名叫阮凱蒂、阮查理的人)，但是洋人一見到阮的拼法 Nguyen 便一頭霧水，他們覺得這個字很難唸。洋人不會用「Ng」當作字首，所以洋人經常天馬行空地想怎麼唸就怎麼唸，新創出好幾種獲得認可的 Nguyen 發音。 (畢竟，假如某位名叫阮凱蒂的人說，你把 Nguyen 唸成「NEW-yen」也沒關係，那我們還有什麼好爭的呢？) 反正重點在於，Nguyen 的發音千差萬別就是了。
回到徵稅和官員的議題上。這兩種原因都無法解釋越南姓阮的人何以如此之多。想想，從中國來越南的中階官員為數極多，他們都把自己的姓分派下去，為什麼單單阮姓稱霸？
由於越南早期曾受中國統治之故，跟世界大多數地方比起來，姓氏在越南的歷史相當悠久；話雖如此，越南人似乎從來都不怎麼在乎姓氏這回事。姓氏完全沒有成為越南人用來稱呼他人或自稱的基本習慣。
歐哈洛說：「越南語沒有像是他、她、你們、他們這類的代名詞。」越南人在稱呼他人時，經常採用歐哈洛稱作「擬親屬關係詞」(fictive kinship term) 的方式。原則上，越南人會說出對方的全名，再加上某種家族式的修飾語，以表明說者與聽者間的關係。假設你在跟一位名叫容 (Dũng) 的好友聊天，而且你們倆歲數差不多，那麼你可以稱呼他「Anh Dũng」，意思是「容哥」。如果要突顯年齡或性別差異，或表示敬意，那麼你可以稱呼他「容叔叔」、「容婆婆」或「小容」。
越南有使用姓氏，但是姓氏並沒有很重要。而且既然姓氏不太重要，假如另一個姓氏對你比較有幫助，那麼大可以換掉姓氏。這種作法可能是延續越南在還沒受中國統治之前的姓名用法，但也可能並非如此，真實原因我們並不曉得，不過自此之後，越南人往往是誰統治他們，就改用那個人的姓。這被當成一種表白忠誠度的作法，而且隨著統治者改朝換代，姓氏也變更不迭。說真的，你不會想要大剌剌地掛著前朝君主的姓氏。
歐哈洛說：「這種跟統治者用同個姓氏以顯忠誠的傳統，也許正是越南那麼多人姓阮的原因。」猜猜看最後一個統治越南的朝代？沒錯，正是 1802 年至 1945 年的阮朝。可能在阮朝之前，越南姓阮的人數已經相當可觀，因為越南人可用的姓氏選項一直都沒有很多，但是在阮朝統治期間，阮姓人氏所占比例想必突飛猛進。
跟統治者姓同姓的傾向，絕非越南獨有。韓國的朴姓也有相同淵源，此姓原本來自朴赫居世 (Hyeokgeose Park)，他是朝鮮半島長達千年的三國時代第一位新羅國王。理論上，韓國全部姓朴之人的遠祖都可以追溯到這位國王，但是在 1894 年的東學農民革命過後，許多農民改姓朴，象徵揚棄封建制度。
對於人數超過 150 萬的越南裔美國人而言，姓阮是一件複雜的課題。我有一位在 GQ 雜誌擔任數位副主編的友人阮凱文 (Kevin Nguyen)，他說：「看到誰姓阮，十之八九代表他是越南人，但是既然越南四成的人都姓阮，那麼姓不姓阮其實也沒有多重要。如果我有小孩，我完全不介意他們姓阮，因為或許除了『非白人』之外，姓阮就不再給人有其他任何的聯想了。」
無論是利用 23andMe、Ancestry.com 或任何此類網站，凱文都無法真正追溯自己的身世。一個原因是，23andMe 的亞洲 DNA 樣本數太少，基本上只能得到「你是亞洲人」這項資訊，沒有太大幫助。阮凱文說：「就算我想註冊這種追蹤家族世系的網站，我認為收穫可能也非常有限，因為網站所能查到的阮姓資料實在太少，而且也完全沒有我祖父之前的先祖在越南的任何紀錄。我有興趣瞭解自己出身，但總覺得這類網站無法讓我有更透徹的認識。」
不過這種追溯姓名由來的風潮，卻附加著並非所有美國人所能設想到的包袱。筆者的姓氏 Nosowitz，似乎是我的曾祖父在 20 世紀初來到美國以後才出現的，搜尋結果驟然止於船隻的乘客名單。
阮凱文說：「有趣的是，當人們真的很關注自己的姓氏或承繼自祖先之事物，或是引以為傲時，姓氏幾乎成了一種殊榮。當然，每個人都很重視自己的姓，直到因為這個姓而遭迫害，然後這條姓氏傳承的線便應聲截斷。」阮這個姓，正是一種能指 (signifier)，令人聯想到這種和姓氏有關的迫害：改姓阮，可能是希望自己不會被統治者視為敵對的一方；改姓阮，可能是某位清明廉潔的中國官員的一紙命令。
In the United States, the most popular last name is Smith. As per the 2010 census, about 0.8 percent of Americans have it. In Vietnam, the most popular last name is Nguyen. The estimate for how many people answer to it? Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the country's population. The 14 most popular last names in Vietnam account for well over 90 percent of the population. The 14 most popular last names in the US? Fewer than 6 percent.
In the U.S., an immigrant country, last names are hugely important. They can indicate where you're from, right down to the village; the profession of a relative deep in your past; how long it's been since your ancestors emigrated; your religion; your social status.
Nguyen doesn't indicate much more than that you are Vietnamese. Someone with the last name Nguyen is going to have basically no luck tracing their heritage back beyond a generation or two, will not be able to use search engines to find out much of anything about themselves.
This difference illustrates something very weird about last names: they're a surprisingly recent creation in most of the world, and there remain many places where they just aren't very important. Vietnam is one of those.
The existence of last names in Vietnam dates to 111 BC, the beginning of a lengthy thousand-year occupation of the country by the Han Dynasty in China. (There were a few short-lived attempts at independence before the Vietnamese kicked the Chinese out in 939 AD.) Before this time, nobody really knows how the Vietnamese handled names, due to lack of written records. In fact even the name "Vietnam" comes from the Chinese; "viet" is the Vietnamese version of the word the Chinese used to describe the people southeast of Yunnan Province.
It is likely that the Vietnamese, prior to Chinese domination, did not use last names, (or family names, which we should call them, given that in Vietnam and many other places, this name does not come last). This does not make them unusual at all. Prior to the 18th century, much of the world did not use family names. More common would be what's called a "patronymic" name, meaning your full name would literally translate as something like "Steve son of Bob." Patronymic names refer only to the generation immediately before and remain common in much of the world, especially in Scandinavia and the Middle East. (Keep an eye out for "surnames" ending in "-sson" or including "Ben" or "Ibn." Those are patronymic names.)
The entire idea of a family name was unknown to most of the world unless you were conquered by a place that used them. Those conquerors included the Romans, the Normans, the Chinese, and later the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Germans, and the Americans. It was the Chinese who gave Vietnam family names.
The Chinese have had family names for thousands of years, sometimes indicating occupation, social status, or membership of a minority group. Well before the time of China's occupation of Vietnam, the Chinese had a sophisticated system of family names for a pretty basic reason: taxes. "Under the Chinese colonial rulership, the Chinese typically will designate a family name to keep tax records," says Stephen O'Harrow, the chairman of Indo-Pacific Languages and head of the Vietnamese department the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. "They used a limited number of family names for the people under their jurisdiction."
Basically, the Chinese (and later the Romans and Normans) conquered all these places with all these people, and they needed some way to keep track of them so they could be taxed. But most of these places didn't have family names, which made them a real pain to monitor. How can you be sure that you're taxing the right Dũng, when there are a dozen of them in the same village and they're referred to as "Uncle Dũng" and "Brother Dũng"?
So the Chinese just started handing out last names to people. They assigned these surnames pretty much randomly, but the original pool of last names largely came from Chinese last names, or Vietnamese derivations of them. Nguyen, for example, came from the Chinese Ruan. "My guess is, senior Chinese administrators used their own personal names to designate people under their own aegis," says O'Harrow. This kind of thing happened a lot; the tendency of the imperialist to just bestow his name on the people he conquered can be seen everywhere from the Philippines (which has tons of Spanish last names) to the U.S. (where black Americans often have the names of the owners of slave ancestors) to the Indian state of Goa (Portuguese).
Ruan itself might come from an ancient Chinese state of the same name, or maybe from the ancient lute-like instrument also called a ruan. Who knows? Either way, it seems likely that some mid-level Chinese bureaucrat, in seeking to figure out who actually lived in his newly conquered Vietnamese territory, simply decided that everyone living there would also be named Ruan—which became Nguyen.
Oh right, let's take a minute to discuss the pronunciation of Nguyen. If you search, you'll find dozens of extremely confident declarations about the correct way to say the name. These are not wrong, necessarily, but a central problem is that, well, there isn't really one correct way to say Nguyen. Vietnam has a few different dialects, with the biggest division between them being geographical, namely north-south. Southern Vietnamese tend to clip some of their sounds, so Nguyen would be pronounced something like "Win" or "Wen." Northern Vietnamese would keep it, giving a pronunciation more like "N'Win" or "Nuh'Win," all done as best you can in one syllable.
This has all been further complicated by the Vietnamese diaspora. In the interest of easier assimilation, Western given names are pretty popular—you may know a Katie Nguyen or a Charles Nguyen—but Nguyen, with a spelling that would immediately confuse Westerners, remains difficult. That "Ng" beginning is not a sound that Westerners are use to as an opener to a word. So there is a tendency to kind of let pronunciation slide, creating a whole new range of acceptable ways to say Nguyen. (After all, if someone named Katie Nguyen says it's fine for you to pronounce it "NEW-yen," who are we to argue?) But the key is that pronunciation of Nguyen varies pretty widely.
Back to taxes and bureaucrats. None of that explains why Nguyen is such a popular family name in Vietnam. After all, there were tons of those mid-level bureaucrats handing out family names. Why did this one become so popular?
Though last names in Vietnam are, thanks to that early period under Chinese control, much older than they are in most parts of the world, the Vietnamese never seemed to much care about them. They just never became a fundamental way that Vietnamese people referred to each other or thought about themselves.
"Vietnamese has no pronouns, like he or she or you or they," says O'Harrow. Instead, the usual way to refer to somebody else is with something O'Harrow calls a "fictive kinship term." Essentially, you refer to someone by their given name, and add some kind of family-based modifier which indicates the relationship between the speaker and listener. If you're talking to our good friend Dũng, and he's about the same age as you, you might call him Anh Dũng, meaning "Brother Dung." To indicate age or gender differences or respect, you might substitute something like "aunt," "grandmother," or "child" in for "Anh."
The last name, in Vietnam, is there, but just isn't that important. And when it's not that important, you might as well change it if a new last name might help you in some way. This may or may not be a continuation of the way names were used before the Chinese came—we really don't know—but ever since, Vietnamese people have tended to take on the last name of whoever was in power at the time. It was seen as a way to show loyalty, a notion which required the relatively frequent changing of names with the succession of rulers. After all, you wouldn't want to be sporting the last name of the previous emperor.
"This tradition of showing loyalty to a leader by taking the family name is probably the origin of why there are so many Nguyens in Vietnam," says O'Harrow. Guess what the last ruling family in Vietnam was? Yep, the Nguyễn Dynasty, which ruled from 1802 to 1945. It's likely that there were plenty of people with the last name Nguyen before then, as there were never all that many last names in Vietnam to begin with, but that percentage surely shot up during the dynasty's reign.
Even this tendency to take on the last name of the ruler is not totally unique to Vietnam. The same thing happened in Korea with the name Park, originally the name of King Hyeokgeose Park, the founder of the thousand-year dynasty of one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Theoretically, all the Parks in Korea trace their ancestry back to that king, but after a peasant revolution in 1894, many peasants adopted the last name Park as a symbol of the abolishment of the caste system.
For Vietnamese-Americans, which number over 1.5 million, having the last name Nguyen is a complicated subject. "It's a signifier for being Vietnamese, but when 40 percent of the Vietnamese population is Nguyen, it doesn't really mean that much," says Kevin Nguyen, a friend of mine who works as the digital deputy editor of GQ. "If I have kids, I don't really care if their name is Nguyen, because it doesn't really attach them to anything besides, maybe, 'non-white.'"
Kevin can't really trace back his history using 23andMe or Ancestry.com or any of those sites, either. For one thing, 23andMe has such a tiny number of Asian DNA samples that it basically can't get any information beyond "Asian," which is not very helpful. "Even if I wanted to sign up for an ancestry-lineage type site, I don't think it would get very far, because there's just so little to go on with my last name, and there are no records of anyone past my grandparents in Vietnam," says Nguyen. "I'd be interested, but I just don't think there'd be a way to learn much more."
But that tendency to trace one's name has baggage attached to it that not all Americans will have considered. My own last name doesn't seem to have existed before my great-grandfather came to the U.S. in the early 20th century; searches stop abruptly at the ship's manifest.
"It's funny, when people are really specific or proud of their last name or heritage, it's almost a form of privilege," says Nguyen. "Like sure, everyone cares about their last name, until you're persecuted and that line is broken." Nguyen as a last name is a signifier of that persecution, from trying not to be seen as an enemy of the royal dynasty all the way back to the actions of a probably disinterested Chinese bureaucrat.
作者：Dan Nosowitz
來源：https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nguyen-name-common-vietnam
美國最普遍的姓氏是史密斯 (Smith)。2010 年人口普查顯示，近 0.8% 的美國人姓史密斯。越南最普遍的姓氏則是阮，估計有三到四成的越南人姓阮。越南前十四大姓氏的人口總數，就占全國人口九成以上。那麼美國前十四大姓氏占全國人口的比例呢？不到 6%。
在美國這樣的移民國家，姓氏有舉足輕重的地位。姓氏會透露你的來歷 (可以一直追溯到出身的村莊)、你的遠祖做什麼職業、祖先遷居至此已過了多久、你的宗教、以及你的社會地位。
阮這個姓氏，頂多就透露你是個越南人。基本上，姓阮的人很難回推一或二個世代以上的家族史，把名字丟搜尋引擎，也沒辦法找到太多跟自身有關的資訊。
美國和越南姓氏背後隱藏的訊息，呈現如此大的差異，這說明了姓氏的奇異之處：在世界大多數地方，姓氏竟然只是近代的產物，而且姓氏在很多地方根本不怎麼重要，越南就是一個例子。
越南人冠上姓氏，可以追溯到西元前 111 年，此時越南開始成為中國漢朝的領土，開啟了越南長達千年隸屬中國的歷史。(西元 939 年，越南才逐出中國勢力，自立王國，在此之前曾有幾次短暫的獨立運動。) 由於缺乏文字紀錄的關係，現已無法得知西元前 111 年以前的越南人如何使用姓名。事實上，就連「Vietnam」這個名稱都取自中文，「viet」是中文「越」字的越語拼音，「越」指的是位於中國雲南省東南方的族群。
在中國統治以前，越南人很可能沒有姓氏 (或者應該說家族姓氏 [family name]，畢竟在越南和其他很多地方，姓氏並不是像英語的 last name 那樣，放在全名的最後面)。不過這一點也不足為奇，因為 18 世紀以前，世界上大多數地方並未使用姓氏。最常見的是「父名」(patronymic name)，這代表你的全名實際上翻譯起來可能會變成「史提夫，鮑伯之子」(Steve son of Bob)。父名只能看出最接近的上一代，此命名法通行於世界許多地方，尤其是斯堪地那維亞半島和中東地區。(注意結尾有「-sson」，或是包含「Ben」或「Ibn.」在內的姓氏，這些都屬於父名。)
很多地方一直都對姓氏這回事沒有概念，除非那個地方被有使用姓氏的地方給征服。這樣的征服者包括羅馬人、諾曼人、中國人、以及晚近的西班牙人、葡萄牙人、德國人和美國人。在越南引進姓氏觀念的，正是中國人。
中國人冠上姓氏已有千餘年歷史，有時從姓氏可以看出一個人的職業、社會地位、或少數族群血統。中國還沒統治越南以前，中國人已經有一套複雜的姓氏制度，用意很簡單：徵稅。夏威夷大學馬諾阿分校印度-太平洋語學系和越語學系兼任教授史蒂芬．歐哈洛 (Stephen O'Harrow) 說：「在中國的殖民統治下，中國人往往會給殖民地人民分派姓氏，方便記錄稅務。中國人只用少數幾個姓氏分派給轄下的人民。」
基本上，中國人 (以及之後的羅馬人、諾曼人) 擴張領土，收服當地人民，這些征服者需要設法對被征服者登記造冊，才能向其課稅。但是，被征服之處大多沒有使用姓氏的習慣，實難妥善監督被征服者。當同一村有十幾人叫作「容」，有人稱他們「容叔」、「容哥」，此時該如何確認你徵稅的對象，就是你要的那個名叫容的人呢？
所以，中國人就開始給越南人冠上姓氏。姓氏的分派相當隨機，不過多半取自中國姓，或是從中國姓衍伸出的越南字，例如越南的阮姓 (越南語拼音 Nguyen) 即是源自中國的阮姓 (漢語拼音 Ruan)。歐哈洛說：「據我猜測，較高階級的中國統治者，可能把自己的名字分派給轄下的人民當作姓氏。」這種事情屢見不鮮：從菲律賓 (超多菲律賓人有西班牙姓) 到美國 (美國黑人的姓，常是其當過奴隸的祖先所屬的主人名字) 和印度的果阿邦 (曾受葡萄牙殖民)，帝國主義統治者往往會將自身名字冠予被征服者之上。
阮字的由來，或許是古代中國同樣名叫「阮」的邦國，也或許是同樣名叫「阮」的一種狀似魯特琴的樂器，實情已無從得知。無論如何，似乎很可能是有些中階的中國官員，為了得知到底有哪些人住在其新征服的越南領土上，索性下令該地居民一律改姓阮。
對了，不妨花點時間討論「Nguyen」的發音。假如你查詢一下，會發現 Nguyen 有幾十種自稱正確的發音。這些發音都沒有唸錯，但是主要問題是，並沒有唯一一個正確的發音。越南有好幾種方言，尤以南方和北方差異最為明顯。南越的方言往往會省略一些聲音，所以 Nguyen 唸起來就像是「Win」或「Wen」。北越則會保留聲音，於是 Nguyen 唸起來比較像「N'Win」或「Nuh'Win」，而且你要盡可能用一個音節的長度發出這些音。
越南人的流亡遷徙，又使得發音這件事變得更加複雜。由於早期的同化政策，帶有洋風的姓名在越南頗為常見 (你可能認識名叫阮凱蒂、阮查理的人)，但是洋人一見到阮的拼法 Nguyen 便一頭霧水，他們覺得這個字很難唸。洋人不會用「Ng」當作字首，所以洋人經常天馬行空地想怎麼唸就怎麼唸，新創出好幾種獲得認可的 Nguyen 發音。 (畢竟，假如某位名叫阮凱蒂的人說，你把 Nguyen 唸成「NEW-yen」也沒關係，那我們還有什麼好爭的呢？) 反正重點在於，Nguyen 的發音千差萬別就是了。
回到徵稅和官員的議題上。這兩種原因都無法解釋越南姓阮的人何以如此之多。想想，從中國來越南的中階官員為數極多，他們都把自己的姓分派下去，為什麼單單阮姓稱霸？
由於越南早期曾受中國統治之故，跟世界大多數地方比起來，姓氏在越南的歷史相當悠久；話雖如此，越南人似乎從來都不怎麼在乎姓氏這回事。姓氏完全沒有成為越南人用來稱呼他人或自稱的基本習慣。
歐哈洛說：「越南語沒有像是他、她、你們、他們這類的代名詞。」越南人在稱呼他人時，經常採用歐哈洛稱作「擬親屬關係詞」(fictive kinship term) 的方式。原則上，越南人會說出對方的全名，再加上某種家族式的修飾語，以表明說者與聽者間的關係。假設你在跟一位名叫容 (Dũng) 的好友聊天，而且你們倆歲數差不多，那麼你可以稱呼他「Anh Dũng」，意思是「容哥」。如果要突顯年齡或性別差異，或表示敬意，那麼你可以稱呼他「容叔叔」、「容婆婆」或「小容」。
越南有使用姓氏，但是姓氏並沒有很重要。而且既然姓氏不太重要，假如另一個姓氏對你比較有幫助，那麼大可以換掉姓氏。這種作法可能是延續越南在還沒受中國統治之前的姓名用法，但也可能並非如此，真實原因我們並不曉得，不過自此之後，越南人往往是誰統治他們，就改用那個人的姓。這被當成一種表白忠誠度的作法，而且隨著統治者改朝換代，姓氏也變更不迭。說真的，你不會想要大剌剌地掛著前朝君主的姓氏。
歐哈洛說：「這種跟統治者用同個姓氏以顯忠誠的傳統，也許正是越南那麼多人姓阮的原因。」猜猜看最後一個統治越南的朝代？沒錯，正是 1802 年至 1945 年的阮朝。可能在阮朝之前，越南姓阮的人數已經相當可觀，因為越南人可用的姓氏選項一直都沒有很多，但是在阮朝統治期間，阮姓人氏所占比例想必突飛猛進。
跟統治者姓同姓的傾向，絕非越南獨有。韓國的朴姓也有相同淵源，此姓原本來自朴赫居世 (Hyeokgeose Park)，他是朝鮮半島長達千年的三國時代第一位新羅國王。理論上，韓國全部姓朴之人的遠祖都可以追溯到這位國王，但是在 1894 年的東學農民革命過後，許多農民改姓朴，象徵揚棄封建制度。
對於人數超過 150 萬的越南裔美國人而言，姓阮是一件複雜的課題。我有一位在 GQ 雜誌擔任數位副主編的友人阮凱文 (Kevin Nguyen)，他說：「看到誰姓阮，十之八九代表他是越南人，但是既然越南四成的人都姓阮，那麼姓不姓阮其實也沒有多重要。如果我有小孩，我完全不介意他們姓阮，因為或許除了『非白人』之外，姓阮就不再給人有其他任何的聯想了。」
無論是利用 23andMe、Ancestry.com 或任何此類網站，凱文都無法真正追溯自己的身世。一個原因是，23andMe 的亞洲 DNA 樣本數太少，基本上只能得到「你是亞洲人」這項資訊，沒有太大幫助。阮凱文說：「就算我想註冊這種追蹤家族世系的網站，我認為收穫可能也非常有限，因為網站所能查到的阮姓資料實在太少，而且也完全沒有我祖父之前的先祖在越南的任何紀錄。我有興趣瞭解自己出身，但總覺得這類網站無法讓我有更透徹的認識。」
不過這種追溯姓名由來的風潮，卻附加著並非所有美國人所能設想到的包袱。筆者的姓氏 Nosowitz，似乎是我的曾祖父在 20 世紀初來到美國以後才出現的，搜尋結果驟然止於船隻的乘客名單。
阮凱文說：「有趣的是，當人們真的很關注自己的姓氏或承繼自祖先之事物，或是引以為傲時，姓氏幾乎成了一種殊榮。當然，每個人都很重視自己的姓，直到因為這個姓而遭迫害，然後這條姓氏傳承的線便應聲截斷。」阮這個姓，正是一種能指 (signifier)，令人聯想到這種和姓氏有關的迫害：改姓阮，可能是希望自己不會被統治者視為敵對的一方；改姓阮，可能是某位清明廉潔的中國官員的一紙命令。
In the United States, the most popular last name is Smith. As per the 2010 census, about 0.8 percent of Americans have it. In Vietnam, the most popular last name is Nguyen. The estimate for how many people answer to it? Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the country's population. The 14 most popular last names in Vietnam account for well over 90 percent of the population. The 14 most popular last names in the US? Fewer than 6 percent.
In the U.S., an immigrant country, last names are hugely important. They can indicate where you're from, right down to the village; the profession of a relative deep in your past; how long it's been since your ancestors emigrated; your religion; your social status.
Nguyen doesn't indicate much more than that you are Vietnamese. Someone with the last name Nguyen is going to have basically no luck tracing their heritage back beyond a generation or two, will not be able to use search engines to find out much of anything about themselves.
This difference illustrates something very weird about last names: they're a surprisingly recent creation in most of the world, and there remain many places where they just aren't very important. Vietnam is one of those.
The existence of last names in Vietnam dates to 111 BC, the beginning of a lengthy thousand-year occupation of the country by the Han Dynasty in China. (There were a few short-lived attempts at independence before the Vietnamese kicked the Chinese out in 939 AD.) Before this time, nobody really knows how the Vietnamese handled names, due to lack of written records. In fact even the name "Vietnam" comes from the Chinese; "viet" is the Vietnamese version of the word the Chinese used to describe the people southeast of Yunnan Province.
It is likely that the Vietnamese, prior to Chinese domination, did not use last names, (or family names, which we should call them, given that in Vietnam and many other places, this name does not come last). This does not make them unusual at all. Prior to the 18th century, much of the world did not use family names. More common would be what's called a "patronymic" name, meaning your full name would literally translate as something like "Steve son of Bob." Patronymic names refer only to the generation immediately before and remain common in much of the world, especially in Scandinavia and the Middle East. (Keep an eye out for "surnames" ending in "-sson" or including "Ben" or "Ibn." Those are patronymic names.)
The entire idea of a family name was unknown to most of the world unless you were conquered by a place that used them. Those conquerors included the Romans, the Normans, the Chinese, and later the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Germans, and the Americans. It was the Chinese who gave Vietnam family names.
The Chinese have had family names for thousands of years, sometimes indicating occupation, social status, or membership of a minority group. Well before the time of China's occupation of Vietnam, the Chinese had a sophisticated system of family names for a pretty basic reason: taxes. "Under the Chinese colonial rulership, the Chinese typically will designate a family name to keep tax records," says Stephen O'Harrow, the chairman of Indo-Pacific Languages and head of the Vietnamese department the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. "They used a limited number of family names for the people under their jurisdiction."
Basically, the Chinese (and later the Romans and Normans) conquered all these places with all these people, and they needed some way to keep track of them so they could be taxed. But most of these places didn't have family names, which made them a real pain to monitor. How can you be sure that you're taxing the right Dũng, when there are a dozen of them in the same village and they're referred to as "Uncle Dũng" and "Brother Dũng"?
So the Chinese just started handing out last names to people. They assigned these surnames pretty much randomly, but the original pool of last names largely came from Chinese last names, or Vietnamese derivations of them. Nguyen, for example, came from the Chinese Ruan. "My guess is, senior Chinese administrators used their own personal names to designate people under their own aegis," says O'Harrow. This kind of thing happened a lot; the tendency of the imperialist to just bestow his name on the people he conquered can be seen everywhere from the Philippines (which has tons of Spanish last names) to the U.S. (where black Americans often have the names of the owners of slave ancestors) to the Indian state of Goa (Portuguese).
Ruan itself might come from an ancient Chinese state of the same name, or maybe from the ancient lute-like instrument also called a ruan. Who knows? Either way, it seems likely that some mid-level Chinese bureaucrat, in seeking to figure out who actually lived in his newly conquered Vietnamese territory, simply decided that everyone living there would also be named Ruan—which became Nguyen.
Oh right, let's take a minute to discuss the pronunciation of Nguyen. If you search, you'll find dozens of extremely confident declarations about the correct way to say the name. These are not wrong, necessarily, but a central problem is that, well, there isn't really one correct way to say Nguyen. Vietnam has a few different dialects, with the biggest division between them being geographical, namely north-south. Southern Vietnamese tend to clip some of their sounds, so Nguyen would be pronounced something like "Win" or "Wen." Northern Vietnamese would keep it, giving a pronunciation more like "N'Win" or "Nuh'Win," all done as best you can in one syllable.
This has all been further complicated by the Vietnamese diaspora. In the interest of easier assimilation, Western given names are pretty popular—you may know a Katie Nguyen or a Charles Nguyen—but Nguyen, with a spelling that would immediately confuse Westerners, remains difficult. That "Ng" beginning is not a sound that Westerners are use to as an opener to a word. So there is a tendency to kind of let pronunciation slide, creating a whole new range of acceptable ways to say Nguyen. (After all, if someone named Katie Nguyen says it's fine for you to pronounce it "NEW-yen," who are we to argue?) But the key is that pronunciation of Nguyen varies pretty widely.
Back to taxes and bureaucrats. None of that explains why Nguyen is such a popular family name in Vietnam. After all, there were tons of those mid-level bureaucrats handing out family names. Why did this one become so popular?
Though last names in Vietnam are, thanks to that early period under Chinese control, much older than they are in most parts of the world, the Vietnamese never seemed to much care about them. They just never became a fundamental way that Vietnamese people referred to each other or thought about themselves.
"Vietnamese has no pronouns, like he or she or you or they," says O'Harrow. Instead, the usual way to refer to somebody else is with something O'Harrow calls a "fictive kinship term." Essentially, you refer to someone by their given name, and add some kind of family-based modifier which indicates the relationship between the speaker and listener. If you're talking to our good friend Dũng, and he's about the same age as you, you might call him Anh Dũng, meaning "Brother Dung." To indicate age or gender differences or respect, you might substitute something like "aunt," "grandmother," or "child" in for "Anh."
The last name, in Vietnam, is there, but just isn't that important. And when it's not that important, you might as well change it if a new last name might help you in some way. This may or may not be a continuation of the way names were used before the Chinese came—we really don't know—but ever since, Vietnamese people have tended to take on the last name of whoever was in power at the time. It was seen as a way to show loyalty, a notion which required the relatively frequent changing of names with the succession of rulers. After all, you wouldn't want to be sporting the last name of the previous emperor.
"This tradition of showing loyalty to a leader by taking the family name is probably the origin of why there are so many Nguyens in Vietnam," says O'Harrow. Guess what the last ruling family in Vietnam was? Yep, the Nguyễn Dynasty, which ruled from 1802 to 1945. It's likely that there were plenty of people with the last name Nguyen before then, as there were never all that many last names in Vietnam to begin with, but that percentage surely shot up during the dynasty's reign.
Even this tendency to take on the last name of the ruler is not totally unique to Vietnam. The same thing happened in Korea with the name Park, originally the name of King Hyeokgeose Park, the founder of the thousand-year dynasty of one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Theoretically, all the Parks in Korea trace their ancestry back to that king, but after a peasant revolution in 1894, many peasants adopted the last name Park as a symbol of the abolishment of the caste system.
For Vietnamese-Americans, which number over 1.5 million, having the last name Nguyen is a complicated subject. "It's a signifier for being Vietnamese, but when 40 percent of the Vietnamese population is Nguyen, it doesn't really mean that much," says Kevin Nguyen, a friend of mine who works as the digital deputy editor of GQ. "If I have kids, I don't really care if their name is Nguyen, because it doesn't really attach them to anything besides, maybe, 'non-white.'"
Kevin can't really trace back his history using 23andMe or Ancestry.com or any of those sites, either. For one thing, 23andMe has such a tiny number of Asian DNA samples that it basically can't get any information beyond "Asian," which is not very helpful. "Even if I wanted to sign up for an ancestry-lineage type site, I don't think it would get very far, because there's just so little to go on with my last name, and there are no records of anyone past my grandparents in Vietnam," says Nguyen. "I'd be interested, but I just don't think there'd be a way to learn much more."
But that tendency to trace one's name has baggage attached to it that not all Americans will have considered. My own last name doesn't seem to have existed before my great-grandfather came to the U.S. in the early 20th century; searches stop abruptly at the ship's manifest.
"It's funny, when people are really specific or proud of their last name or heritage, it's almost a form of privilege," says Nguyen. "Like sure, everyone cares about their last name, until you're persecuted and that line is broken." Nguyen as a last name is a signifier of that persecution, from trying not to be seen as an enemy of the royal dynasty all the way back to the actions of a probably disinterested Chinese bureaucrat.
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