Middle Name
Most Vietnamese have one middle name, but it is quite possible to have two or more, or even no middle names at all.
In the past, the middle name was selected by parents from a fairly narrow range of options. Almost all women had Thị (氏) as their middle name, and many men had Văn (文). More recently, a broader range of names have been used, and people named Thị sometimes omit their middle name.
Thị is by far the most common female middle name. This word expresses possession; for example, "Trần Thị Mai Loan" is a person who has the given name of "Mai Loan" and the surname "Trần", and the combination "Trần Thị" means "A female person belonging to the Trần family". The combination is similar to western surname formation like "Van" in "Van Helsing", "Mac" in "MacCartney" etc. Male middle names include Văn (文), Hữu (友), Đức (德), Thành ("誠"), Công (公), Quang (光) and many others.
The middle name can have three usages:
- To indicate a person's generation — brothers and sisters share the same middle name, which distinguish them from the generation before them and the generation after them (see generation name).
- To separate branches of a big family. For example, "Nguyễn Hữu", "Nguyễn Sinh", "Trần Lâm". However, this usage is still controversial. Some people consider them to be dual family names, not family name + middle name. Some families may, however, set up arbitrary rules about giving a different middle name to each generation.
- To indicate a person's position in the family, also known as birth order. This usage is less common than others.
However, nowadays most middle names do not have those usages. They can either have a meaning or just be there to make the full names more euphonious.
Read more about this topic: Vietnamese Name
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