Names of Ho Chi Minh City

Originally known as Prey Nôkôr while a part of the Khmer Empire,[nb 1] it came to be dubbed Sài Gòn (listenⓘ) informally by Vietnamese settlers fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn War to the north.

In 1623, Khmer King Chey Chettha II (1618–1628) allowed the Vietnamese to settle in the area, which they colloquially referred to as Sài Gòn, and to set up a custom house at Prey Nôkôr.

[7] 柴棍 also appears later in Trịnh Hoài Đức's Gia Định thành thông chí (嘉定城通志 "Comprehensive Records about the Gia Định Citadel", c. 1820),[8] Nam quốc địa dư giáo khoa thư (南國地輿教科書 "Textbook on the Geography of the Southern Country", 1908),[9] etc.

This name may have originated from the many Bombax ceiba (kapok) trees that the Khmer people had planted around Prey Nôkôr, and which can still be seen at Cây Mai temple and surrounding areas.

[citation needed] In Chinese, the city is referred to as 西貢, which is pronounced Sāigung in Cantonese and which 20th-century Vietnamese scholar Vương Hồng Sển [vi] proposed to be a transcription of Vietnamese Sài Gòn;[nb 5][12] 西貢 is also pronounced Tây Cống in Sino-Vietnamese, Sai-kòng in Teochew, Xīgòng in Mandarin, etc.

French officer Francis Garnier proposes that Sài Gòn's etymology is in the Cantonese name of Chợ Lớn (chữ Nôm: 𢄂𡘯), the Chinese district of Saigon.

However, if the word passed directly from Cham into Vietnamese without a Khmer intermediary stage, the complex onset, apocope and voice distinctions would be eliminated.

For example, "không" as /kʰəwŋ͡m˧˧/ or /xəwŋ͡m˧˧/ meaning "no" is not dialectal according to region, but is used in free variation throughout present day Ho Chi Minh City (Lopez, 2010).

Therefore, the historical chronology given by Nghia M. Vo is corroborated by linguistic evidence as NPD (Normal Phonological Development) would lead to the Cham name of Bai Gaur being adopted into Vietnamese as "Sài Gòn".

This act formally detached the area from Cambodia, which found itself too weak to intervene due to its ongoing conflict with Thailand.

Prey Nôkôr was officially renamed Gia Định (chữ Hán: 嘉定), and the region was placed firmly under Vietnamese administrative control.

Another possible etymology, based on the fact that Malay speakers existed in the region during the era of Vietnamese settlement, relates the name to the Malay words ya dingin or ya hering, meaning "cool and cold" or "cold and clear", respectively—perhaps referring to the appearance of the area's many waterways.

[16] On August 27, 1946, Viet Minh's official newspaper Cứu Quốc (National Salvation) published the article Thành Phố SÀI-GÒN Từ Nay Sẽ Đổi Tên là thành phố HỒ-CHÍ-MINH (Saigon City is Now Renamed Ho Chi Minh City).

[nb 8] As noted, the now-official name commemorates North Vietnamese leader Hồ Chí Minh, who, although deceased by the time of the Fall of Saigon, was instrumental in the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

[20] The kingdom of Champa, though mainly based along the coast of the South China Sea, is known to have expanded west into the Mekong Delta.