Nearly 40 million Vietnamese has the surname Nguyen. This is not only the most popular last name in Vietnam but also one of the most popular last names in the world.
Many times, when someone else with the Nguyen last name and Iwere in the same conversation, people asked if we were from the same family. But no! Perhaps even our ancestors were not!!! There are a few historical reasons that this last name is so popular as follows:
1/ During the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589) China was in turmoil. Therefore, a part of the Nguyen families living in Anhui, Zhejiang, and Hubei … migrated to Vietnam. Over time, they have assimilated with the native people and created a significant part of the Vietnamese with the surname Nguyen. Then, during the Five Dynasties period in China, more of the Nguyen people gradually moved to the South, adding to the number of native Nguyen people in Vietnam.
2/ Before the Tran Dynasty was the reign of the Ly Dynasty (1009-1225). This is one of the dynasty transitions with the least bloodshed in Vietnamese history. This is a lot thanks to the cleverness of Prince Tran Thu Do. Note that Tran Thu Do didn’t get the throne for himself but for his cousin, Tran Canh. In the early years of the dynasty, when Tran Canh was still a small child, the entire authority of the Tran dynasty was held by Tran Thu Do.
During the first reign of the Tran dynasty (1232), after having won the kingdom from the Ly dynasty, Tran Thu Do, using the reason that the Tran family’s ancestor was named Ly, forced all the people with the surname Ly in the country to change their surname to Nguyen. Note that the descendants of the Ly dynasty were also forced to migrate out of the kingdom.
So, the real intention of Tran Thu Do was to kill the Ly last name so that no one would remember the Ly dynasty anymore. As for the reason why he then chose the surname Nguyen to replace the surname Ly, so far has not been clearly explained.
3/ Since the Nguyen last name became popular, changing surnames has become a “custom”: Every time a new dynasty is replaced, all people with the previous dynasty’s last name will have to change it to Nguyen, to mix in with the huge amount of people with the Nguyen last name. This helped them avoid being hunted down and killed by the new dynasty or being revenged by the previous dynasty. For example, when Ho Quy Ly overthrew the Tran Dynasty, he killed many descendants of the Tran family. Therefore, after the collapse of the Ho Dynasty, the descendants of the Ho family, fearing revenge, changed their surname to Nguyen.
In 1592, the Mac dynasty declined, and the descendants of the Mac family also changed their surname to Nguyen. When the Nguyen Dynasty took power from the Trinh family in 1802, some descendants of the Trinh family were also afraid of revenge, so they changed their surnames to Nguyen in turn, and the rest fled to the North of China.
reference: danviet.vn
