Địa danh


The địa danh variant of a Vietnamese place is the official Chinese-character name historically used by the Sinophere's administration.

Origin

The name is sometimes called Địa-danh chi Hán-văn.
It is used in contrast to the tên nôm, or vernacular name, written in locally derived Sino-Vietnamese characters unique to transcribe non-Sinic Vietnamese words. In the Red River Delta, the demotic Vietnamese place name often begins with "Kẻ" for example: Kẻ Mẩy, Kẻ Cót, Kẻ Vọng.
Many if not most city names in Vietnam are Sino-Vietnamese, but some cities also have earlier Nôm names:
Major cities with Vietnamese demotic names include:
In these cases later Sino-Vietnamese names were derived by local Vietnamese confucian administrators with homonymic phonetic approximations or semantic translations. Some however are completely unrelated.