Taboo Character Restrictions in the Nguyen Dynasty

Does anyone have any information on how long taboo character restrictions

typically lasted after they were enacted, especially during the Nguyen

Dynasty?

Thanks and happy new year to all,

John

--

John D. Phan, Ph.D.

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Department of Crosslinguistic Studies

National Institute for Japanese Language & Linguistics

My guess is that such characters lasted as long as the particular dynasty

that enacted them, but I haven't studied them closely. As for the Nguyen,

I can see them lasting beyond 1945 (1955?) out of habit, if nothing else.

Yours, John Whitmore

I would agree with John's first sentence. I am skeptical about the second. By 1945, most Vietnamese were writing in quoc ngu. This made possible the continuation of some linguistic distortions intended to circumvent taboos in the south, for instance, Huynh instead of Hoang. But some earlier taboos were discarded as well. Southerners used to say " ngay moi" instead "ngay mai", but this has declined. And many southern males are now called Hoang.

Hue Tam Ho Tai

Sent from my iPad

Following John Whitmore and Hue Tam Ho Tai, I remember reading that the

current pronounciation of the word for intitutionalized religions, *tôn

giáo*, was a consequence of a taboo on the character for *tông* (?), which

was replaced by *tôn* (?). It would indeed be interesting to know what

happened to the different taboo characters of nhà Nguy?n (as, if I remember

well, the Ministry of Rites was in charge of the taboos, and of course

there was no more Ministry of Rites to formally release them after 1945).

Was there any government attempt to officially and actively remove these

taboos, even when they had become habits after 1945/1955, in the North and

in the South ? But maybe this takes us a bit too far away from John's

question.

Paul

Given that Bao Dai could not read Chinese and official documents ceased to be issued in Chinese, I would think there was no reason to issue lists of taboo characters. Such lists may in fact have stopped being issued upon the death of Khai Dinh in 1925.

Hue Tam Ho Tai

Dear anh John,

I am sorry coming late to this thread. There is a book by Prof. Ngô Ð?c Th?, if

I am not mistaken, on this very subject of taboo decrees, and he lists some of

the taboo ideogram lists by different emperors in his book.

There were a lot of discussion about how these decrees were implemented

when there was a huge discussion on different versions of Truy?n Ki?u.

There is a theory that if one finds these words in a printed version of Truy?n

Ki?u, you may assume that the date of the version might have fallen into

a certain reign.

Of course, the implement of such decrees depended on the wood carvers

or the calligraphers. We at the first and second International Conferences

on Nôm in Hanoi in 2004 and Hu? in 2006 found that editing of woodblocks

sometimes was inconsistent -- the carvers could only edit what they found

(same problem with manual editing today, no?)… and those private

woodblock publishers who were far from the kingdom may chose not to

change their blocks.

One may say that the taboo ideogram decrees were followed more closely

by descendants than the public.

Sorry I do not remember more…

Best,

Nhàn

The reference work on this topic is Ngô Ð?c Th?'s 1997 EFEO monograph

"Nghiên c?u ch? húy Vi?t Nam qua các tri?u d?i" with French translation by

Emmanuel Poisson as "Les caractères interdits au Vietnam à travers

l'histoire". Most of the book is actually devoted to the Nguy?n dynasty

when the practice was most prevalent. Here are some of its main findings.

-- The practice of taboo character observance in Vietnam did not date to

before the Tr?n dynasty. It was then enforced for royal (kings/queens) and

royal maternal progenitors names. Tabooed characters were either omitted or

deformed (with reduced strokes or added special strokes) in written form,

distorted (with modified pronunciations) for the various homophones, or

replaced completely by synonyms (resulting in changes in personal names,

toponyms, official titles, etc).

-- Though it was strictly enforced in the early years of the Lê dynasty,

the practice was greatly simplified under Lê Thánh Tông after 1466. It was

only loosely observed under the M?c.

-- During the Lê Restoration period, with respect to royal and seigniorial

taboo names, it was practically not observed in written form, only in

localized distorted pronunciation, likewise for the Tây Son period.

-- Under Emperor Gia Long the Nguy?n dynasty reinstated the practice to

cover both imperial and seigniorial names.

-- Emperor Minh M?nh began to regulate imperial names (for personal and

style names) and generation-and-branch-specific middle names. He also

initiated the taboo of Confucius' names.

-- Emperor Thi?u Tr? implemented the most widespread ban of taboo

characters, not only for their ideograms and homophones but also of

ideographic partials (thiên bàng) of the emperor's personal names.

-- Emperor Ð?ng Khánh relaxed the taboo rule of homophones.

-- The study doesn't go beyond the Thành Thái reign, but suggests that by

then the taboo practice has been relaxed even further esp. with respect to

tabooed characters from previous reigns which would be written with reduced

strokes.

I wonder if you all know about taboo words in Hue? In our

family once a person died, we never uttered their name out

loud again. So if GIAO died, we'd have to say "the thing

that cuts" instead of the sharp homonym.

In reference to some repulsive notion such as a rat or ant,

then one would say "the thing that crawls (con bo bo)" or

"ong duoi dai" to avoid naming the anathema.

My aunt Hoang Hoang once drove a taxi driver in Saigon

to tears when she bade him to go to the "THOI BUNH"

market because she couldn't say: Thai or Binh --

both taboo words.

Taboo words have died out by now, as have lacquered

teeth, but it's a fond amusing memory.

T.T. Nhu

Berkeley, California

I did not know about this practice! Though Thoi is a southern distortion of Thai, likely created to avoid using the taboo Thai.

A more usual practice was to avoid giving the name of a relative to one's children. My father wrote about his childhood nickname, Thuoc, which he thought was his birth name until he went to school and had to produce his birth certificate. It turned out that, after registering his birth, his parents were visited by some cousin who pointed out that they had given him the name of some distantly related and dead kin. But this was limited to naming people, not referring to things or flora or fauna!

Hue Tam

Hello,

I keep wondering, if calling/using royal-related names was banned during

the last Nguyen, why is Nguyen the most popular last name in Vietnam?

(intuitively I would think that Nguyen would be the least used during the

period right before the August revolution).

Thanks,

Nguyet

PhD Candidate

History Department

American University

Washington, DC.

Vinh Nguyen vinhnguyen68 at gmail.com

Sat Feb 8 17:29:26 PST 2014

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Good question. It should be noted that we have been talking about taboo

GIVEN NAMES of individuals (not just first names but also including various

personal names, style names, temple/posthumous names, both real and

made-up) and not SURNAMES (family/clan name) here.

One more thing to note is that for the generations after Nguy?n Hoàng, the

southern Nguy?n lords and the subsequent Nguy?n emperors from Nguy?n Ánh

down, the seigniorial/imperial "surname of state" (qu?c tính) is

technically the two-characters surname "Nguy?n PHÚC" which was often

pronounced distortedly into "Nguy?n PHU?C" in the south. Perhaps as a mark

of distinction, if not taboo, or perhaps of evasion (esp. after the decline

and demise of the Nguy?n dynasty by the 20th century), many royal relations

simply use their honorific titles (such as "Tôn Th?t" for males) or

generational-ranks (such as "Tôn N?, "Công T?ng Tôn N?", "Công Huy?n Tôn

N?" for females; and "H?NG/HU?NG", "Ung", "B?u", "Vinh", "B?o", etc.

without the surname for males) as stand-in surnames for what should have

been "Nguy?n PHÚC/PHU?C". But this hardly made a dent in the prevalence of

the umbrella Nguy?n surname in Vietnamese society.

The Nguy?n surname by itself is a common one with many branches (many

different middle names, both royal and non-royal). It is not tabooed, and

if anything it has been a rather common surname to change "into" (rather

than "out of") throughout history for a number of reasons:

(1) Surname change by official order. After seizing power from the Lý

dynasty the early Tr?n kings (the second king Tr?n Thái Tông) forced the

change of the Lý SURNAME to Nguy?n on pretext of it being the tabooed

PERSONAL name of the Tr?n ancestor "Tr?n Lý". The official history ÐVSK

Toàn Thu commented rather cynically that it might have just been a ploy to

rid the population of nostalgia for the Lý dynasty. (A similar measure was

carried out in the early Lê period when Lê L?i forced the change of the

Tr?n SURNAME to Trình on account that it was the taboo PERSONAL name of his

late queen "Ph?m Th? Ng?c TR?N").

(2) Surname change to evade political repercussion. During and after the

M?c period many royal relations of the M?c clan who defected (or went into

hiding) changed their surname (mostly to Ph?m in the north but also to

Nguy?n in the south if they were followers of Nguy?n Hoàng). After the

unification of the country under the Nguy?n dynasty, many people with the

Tr?nh surname in the north changed theirs to Nguy?n to avoid attention to

the period of Tr?nh vs. Nguy?n seigniorial rivalry.

(3) Surname change for political/economic benefit (esp. through adoption

and/or marriage). Ancestors of the Tây Son had had the surname H? from Ngh?

An, but after having been captured and resettled south during the

Tr?nh-Nguy?n civil war, one of them changed their children's surname to

Nguy?n after their mother who hailed from a locally rich/powerful family.

(4) Being "granted the surname of state" (ban qu?c tính). This was an

exceptional favor granted by the ruler to their meritorious or favored

followers with a different surname. This has happened throughout history

(most commonly under the Lê dynasty). Under the Nguy?n lords and emperors

there were prominent examples such as the M?c followers of Nguy?n Hoàng,

the father of Nguy?n Cu Trinh (ie. Nguy?n Ðang Ð? whose parents had been of

the Trinh surname), and one of Gia Long's "Bangkok faithfuls" named Hu?nh

Tu?ng Ð?c became Nguy?n Hu?nh Ð?c by imperial favor.

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