Talk:Ho Chi Minh City/HCMC vs. Saigon debate

Old talk

Should this page really be under Ho Chi Minh City - it is still far more commonly called Saigon - even by the locals. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul Benjamin Austin (talk • contribs) 16:52, 27 March 2003

Ho Chi Minh City is the official and legal name, and the article ought to reflect that. I edited a reference to Ho Chi Minh as well. He was not only a communist leader, but also leader of the anti-colonial fighting against France, Japan and then France again. Edwin

Page move?

This page should move to Saigon. Wikipedia is supposed to use common names. - Nat Krause 07:16, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ho Chi Minh City is the official name. Saigon is the old name, even if it is commonly refered to between Vietnamese, the only reason is because it is shorter. To refer to Ho Chi Minh city as Saigon just because it is common is ridiculous, after all, this is a kind of encyclopedia, and encyclopedia means to be correct to its best. New Zealander call themselves Kiwi, do you just add a link to Kiwi referring to New Zealander instead of the bird itself?

If Saigon is commonly used by Vietnamese and other people, then it is not "the old name". By "official name", I take you are referring to what the government of Vietnam says it should be called. However, Wikipedia has a policy to "use common names" -- it does not have a policy of "go by what the government says". - Nat Krause 04:16, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So it is Wikipedia policy?? Then why didn't you move the page about Ho Chi Minh to uncle Ho and have Ho Chi Minh redirect to uncle Ho instead?? More than 10 years in Vietnam, I've never heard anybody call him "Ho Chi Minh", everybody call him "uncle Ho" (although in all official documents and media he is refered to as "president Ho Chi Minh"). Why didn't you just move United States redirect to U.S instead of making U.S redirect to United States? As far as I'm concern, US and America is being used more commonly than United States.

Searching for Saigon on Encarta, they prefer precision to common. Wikipedia is very weird because it prefer common to precision.

What that Wikipedia's policy of using the most common name possible mean is questionable. I would think it means to use the name that people will most likely used on the search box. In this case, I don't think people will search for Saigon instead of the official name Ho Chi Minh city.

This isn't really an issue of precision. There is only one city called Saigon, just as there is only one famous person called Jimmy Carter. It might be an issue of formality. If Ho Chi Minh was almost always called "Uncle Ho" in English, then we might have his article under Uncle Ho, although I would worry that it is a little on the informal side. After all, we have an article called Mother Theresa.

And I think it is very unlikely that "Ho Chi Minh City" will be searched for more than "Saigon". - Nat Krause 13:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If the Wikipedia policy of using common names would mean Ho Chi Minh City should be moved to Saigon then perhaps Los Angeles should be moved to L.A. and New York City should redirect to Big Apple. In Vietnam, however, the town is perhaps most commonly referred to as TpHCM, short for Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. That is, in common usage, the name is perhaps more often written than spoken and written Vietnamese is commonly full of abbreviations. Anyhow, it is true that the term Sài Gòn is relatively often used in daily speech by Vietnamese in contemporary Vietnam. However, here it should be noted that what was once officially called Sài Gòn, or Saigon in English, is actually not the same as contemporary Ho Chi Minh City. Several suburbs and even adjacent rural districts have been added to yesteryear's Sài Gòn. Contemporary Ho Chi Minh City thus consists of a considerably larger area than Sài Gòn did. When the term Sái Gòn is used by Vietnamese in Vietnam today, it is commonly used to refer to the smaller àrea that constituted old official Sài Gòn, which is, as mentioned, something very different from contemproary Ho Chi Minh City (Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh). If Wikipedia should be about spreading knowledge and, as has been argued above, if this is really a matter of precision, than surely the text would have to be under Ho Chi Minh City and include a note on how Saigon and Ho Chi Minh City are not the same. Vichminh 19:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? In my experience, people outside of Saigon usually refer to the whole city as "Saigon", rather than just the parts that constitute the former city. Only pedantic bureaucrats would use it that way. DHN 20:18, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess I am as sure as you are. At least I do not disagree with your description. Sài Gòn is used today to refer to the "whole city" as you say. The point here is that Ho Chi Minh City includes areas not commonly thought of in terms of "the city". It was not only the official Saigon what was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 but Cholon, Gia Dinh and Saigon. The old Saigon was by no means a small area but Ho Chi Minh City is vast - 2.095 km² to be exact. (For a comparison, according to Wikipedia the whole of New York City covers 1,214 km² and only 800 km² if you do not count water areas). About 90% of Ho Chi Minh City consists of what would be described as rural rather than urban. I would not dare to deny that the term Sài Gòn could at times be used in reference to the whole of Ho Chi Minh City including all of its 24 districts, but I would think this is not common at all. Today even Cu Chi is part of Ho Chi Minh City but I do not think many people, Vietnamese or foreigners, think of Cu Chi as Saigon. Pedantic or not, I would argue that an encyclopedia text on the whole of Ho Chi Minh City, which I assume the text is meant to be about, should be found under the entry Ho Chi Minh City and nowhere else, which of course is not to say the info on the common usage of the term Saigon should be left out. Vichminh 21:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

By the way, are you aware of the Vietnamese Wikipedia? We've been growing by leaps and bounds in the past year, but be still need more contributors ;-) DHN 22:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for asking, I do know the Vietnamese Wikipedia. You are doing a fantastic job with that. The entry for Ho Chi Minh City is in many ways better than this English one. Unfortunately my Vietnamese is not at a high enough level to write any individual entries, but I will try to contribute some bits and pieces via the discussions. Vichminh 08:35, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

While I don't support moving the page anywhere, I think Saigon is used by most Vietnamese, not just "many". Sites in Vietnam using "Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh" (203,000), sites in Vietnam using "Sài Gòn" (387,000) (this difference is even more pronounced if you include all countries), sites in Vietnam containing "Saigon" (247,000), and containing "Ho Chi Minh City" (128,000). As you're aware, written Vietnamese is more formal than spoken. "Tp. Hồ Chí Minh" is more popular than "Sài Gòn", but most of the pages I found contain postal addresses or are official names of entities. DHN 17:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, your Internet survey of course gives an indication. However, it can hardly be regarded as decisive; after all, sites are not people. I would object to the categorical statement of deciding most, rather than many, Vietnamese use the term Saigon instead of Tp.HCM. The reasons are many. One is that, unless some truly hard evidence showing closer to 50 million Vietnamese use Saigon and not Tp.HCM at all times can be presented then it is more accurate to settle for a less categorical phrasing. Another related argument would be that "many" does not necessarily mean "very few" - it could mean a majority but we just don't know for sure. If one uses the term "most" than it would have to mean the majority of all Vietnamese. Another more crucial argument in my opinion would be that to my experience many, perhaps most people (me, for one) use both Saigon and Tp.HCM depending on context and therefore it would be misleading to claim most people use the term Saigon instead of Tp.HCM. That is, it would be better to say something along the lines of "In many (or most if it can be proved beyond doubt) situations Vietnamese still use the term Saigon for Tp.HCM." Yet another argument is of course the one I have already outlined above, i.e., that few use the term Saigon to refer to Cu Chi (or other more rural areas of Ho Chi Minh City). This argument of course holds for foreigners too. I mean, very few if any international tourists would say they went on a "city tour" when they take the tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels. In the History section it now reads "Generally, the term Saigon refers only to District One, the central district of Hồ Chí Minh City." I think here "District One" could be changed to "city center" or "the urban districts" or something along those lines, but I do insist it is most accurate to hold on to a distinction between Saigon and Tp.HCM as, I argue, this would be the best and most inclusive reflection of a multifaceted social reality. One major reason why I think it is good to stick with a more open and less categorical phrasing (as long as it finds support in social reality of course) is that that for some there are obvious political reasons why the term Saigon should categorically be used instead the official term of the current regime. Vichminh 19:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Strange... I just re-did your Internet survey (just followed your hyperlinks) and got very different figures. "Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh"=430,000. "Sài Gòn"=665,000. "Saigon"=445,000. ""Tp. Hồ Chí Minh"=904,000. I also did a search on "Tp. HCM", which you left out, and got no less than 1,930,000 hits. And I did a search on "HCMC" and got 205,000, and a search on "SGN" which got 19,500 hits. In my survey various forms of the term Ho Chi Minh City thus got 3,469,000 while various forms of Saigon got 1,129,500. Slightly more than three times more hits on various forms of Ho Chi Minh City then. Yet I still believe this cannot be regarded as anything other than an indication. It seems very probable that it actually says something technical about how Google works than about how Saigon is commonly referred to. Furthermore, again, we do not know from this that every single one of my 1,129,500 hits of Saigon is interchangeble with the actual Ho Chi Minh City including all of the rural districts of Hóc Môn, Bình Chánh, Củ Chi, Nhà Bè and Cần Giờ. Anyhow, at the end of the day, Internet sites are not people. Vichminh 20:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

If Ho Chi Minh City is really a different and much larger place than Saigon, perhaps we should have two separate articles for them? I'm not sure in what sense they're the same thing. - Nat Krause^(Talk!) 19:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nat Kraus, they should change it from ho chi minh city to Saigon apollofreak05^(Talk!) 15:30, 08 August 2007 (UTC)

• As a Vietnamese mix, was born in Vietnam and lived here in nearly 20 years. I know that mostly Vietnamese poeple (from North to South) and especially Saigoners and Southern people still calling this city as Sài Gòn because it was original name in 300 years. The second reason that is mostly Western countries are still using dual names of this city as Sai Gon and Ho Chi Minh City at the same time, but as I can see that mostly non-Vietnamese people prefer Sai Gon to HCMC. The third reason that is a Communist copy: That is Saint Petersburg, under ruling of Soviet Communists, they have changed its original and hundred year name to Leningrad (Lenin city). But after 1991, predominantly city people have agreed to changed its holy name back. And the fourth reason: The name of Sai Gon is much popular and famous because many tourists have compared the beauty of Sai Gon as "the Pearl of the Far East" or "Paris of the East" (from French colonial period to before 1975). I support the idea of Nat Krause.

Angelo De La Paz (talk) 07:14, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

More About the Name of the City

Although there is (or soon will be) a Vietnamese Wikipedia... this is the English Wikipedia, which is written in English, which happens to be a language where diacritical marks are rarely used. So we are free to leave off the diacritical marks, I should think. We are also free to use a different name for Saigon, Vietnam from what the locals use in their own language... just like we do with Roma, Baile Atha Cliath, Mumbai, Ciudad de México, Moskva, etc. If it's OK to refer to Ho Chi Minh City rather than the more authentic Thanh Ho Chi Minh... why isn't it just as OK to refer to the name we English-speaking know it best by, i.e., Saigon? Timothy Horrigan (talk) 05:49, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

According to WP:UE, the article name should be the way it would appear in a reliable source, such as another encyclopedia or other reference work. Pretty much any English-language newspaper or reference work will describe the post-1975 city as Ho Chi Minh City. But it's certainly ironic that the English-speaking world follows Hanoi's rules more obediently than either the Chinese or the Vietnamese themselves, both of whom still call the city Saigon. The New York Times and the Associated Press are the ones who decide these things, at least when they are not off fabricating massacres in Korea and Iraq. Kauffner (talk) 16:53, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Re-moved to Ho Chi Minh City

The city is names Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh in Vietnamese. Not Saigon, that was the previous name. Compare it with Sankt Peterburg and Leningrad or other cities that changed their names. If we follow the naming conventions it is the question do we use the native name Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh or the English translation Ho Chi Minh City. I would clearly prefer the latter one, it is not common tu use in English the native name. Saigon is not an option, this the old name of the city. One cannot compare this with discussions like Gdansk/Danzig, Kiyiv/Kiev or Beijing/Peking, since there it is about the translation or romanization of the name. Since there was no clear majority for the move to Saigon, I reverted the move. Electionworld 12:43, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In what sense is "Saigon" the previous name? It's still the name that is in common usage, especially in English, but also in Vietnamese. By the way, is there a clear majority for having the page at Ho Chi Minh City? - Nat Krause 13:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In the Netherlands Amsterdam is named by many people Mokum. But it is now way the name of the city. The name of Saigon was changed after the collapse of South Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. It is the official name. That many people still name it Saigon doesn't make it the city name. I do not know if there is a clear majority for the name Ho Chi Minh city, but you moved it to an old name without having the debate on the talk page. So therefore I reverted it to the old status. I looked some minutes ago in my english atlases and they mention Ho Chi Minh City with Saigon between brackets.

BTW, I do not like cities to be named after communist dictators, but is the fact that the government of Vietnam did so. Electionworld 21:05, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Electionworld, before you call Ho Chi Minh a dictator, perhaps you should research a little bit more yourself. Calling a national hero a "dictator" is rather offensive. I take it that you know quite a lot about the history of Vietnam before you made such offensive statement? If so then perhaps you know that it is South Vietnam with support from the U.S refused to hold an election fearing that Ho Chi Minh might win? Perhaps you know that Ho Chi Minh won Vietnam its independence from the French colonial? Perhaps you know that he died in 1969, 6 years before the ultimate defeat of South Vietnam? Knowing that you do involve in politics and much older than me, I take it that you know much more about world history than I do. If so then perhaps you know that Yasser Arafat, Chiang Kai Shek,... (leaders of countries which constantly under threat from other nations) are all president of their respective countries for life? Even among Vietnamese (that is both North and South Vietnamese, living oversea or in country), whether Ho Chi Minh is a communist or a nationalist using communism as a way to gain independence and reunite Vietnam is contested, i suggest you avoid this kind of offensive statement.--lt2hieu2004 28 June 2005 04:26 (UTC)

Indeed, it appears true that calling Nguyen Tat Thanh a "dictator" is offensive to many—although for the sake of completeness, it may also be noted that among many of my Vietnamese relatives and friends, calling him a "hero" is perceived as at least equally offensive :).

Suffice to say, there remains considerable controversy regarding both current opinions as well as historical perspective regarding the man (although I'm a bit mystified why you chose Chiang and Arafat as comparisons when you criticized the term "dictator" as applied to Nguyen—considering that most regard both of those figures as clear examples of dictators, as well—I suppose you were aware of the potential irony). —Ryanaxp June 28, 2005 14:03 (UTC)

I chose Chiang Kai Shek & Yasser Arafat to compare with Ho Chi Minh because the majority of people who consider Ho Chi Minh a dictator is just because they hate communism, I doubt any one can provide any hard evidence of his "dictatorness". I have yet to know of any country which change their leaders while under threat from other nations, as for Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam was clearly under threat from South Vietnam with support from U.S, moreover, he once said U.S was not Vietnam biggest threat but China (because we have 1000 years of war with them), and indeed we do have war with them twice in 1979 & in the 1980s. I suppose you know what I meant by now, Taiwan was constantly under threat from China then, Palestine situation is even worse. Vietnam, Taiwan & Palestine are all considerably much weaker than U.S, China & Israel.

To me, Ho Chi Minh is a hero because I don't care what is his true motive, the fact is that he gained Vietnam independence from the colonial French & the fascist Japanese and later reunited Vietnam. To a lot of people, calling him a hero is offensive, indeed. However, I'm talking about the majority of people. Nobody is loved by everybody, even Horatio Nelson with the "Nelson touch" is much hated by a lot of people because of his affair Emma Hamilton. All I want to say is that because someone hates Ho Chi Minh doesn't give him the right to make such statement without any hard evidence. I have seen some evidences suggest that he is a communist, not a nationalist, but I have yet to come along any evidence that he is a dictator.

About your Vietnamese friends who may find calling Ho Chi Minh a dictator offensive, I'm sorry if I offended them. However, living in NZ & UK for quite a long time, I have come to a conclusion that there are 3 groups of Vietnamese who considered Ho Chi Minh a dictator. The first group are people who have never come back to Vietnam after 1975 (& especially the period after 1990) - that is people who have never live in a socialist country, this group make up 80%. The second group consists of people who have never been to a non-communist country - that is people who can not compare between Vietnam & other capitalist countries, this group make up 19% of people who are anti - Ho Chi Minh. The last group, people who have come back to Vietnam recently but considered the Vietnam War Ho Chi Minh attempt to turn Vietnam communist at the cost of his own people, 1% of anti - Ho Chi Minh people are in this group. --lt2hieu2004 28 June 2005 23:08 (UTC)

I think it should stay at Ho Chi Minh City. For example: most people refer to Myanmar as Burma -- but entering Burma re-directs to Myanmar. Many countries don't even recognize the country's name as Myanmar. Since in this case we are referring to an official name rather than a common name, I think precedent would suggest Ho Chi Minh City. The Invisible Man 00:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

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Ho Chi Minh City is the official name and should be the title of the article. The name SaiGon is used not because people(including me) dont like the official name, it's just that it's shorter and easier to pronounce.

Agree - keep as Ho Chi Minh City. It is virtually identical to what 'Saigon' is, unless you want to be finicky and define it according to city limits. Incidentally, you will not find any companies with HCM in their names (no "Ho Chi Minh City Burger Bar"). Saigon is considered neutral and it isn't politically incorrect (in the eyes of commie aparachicks) to use the word 'Saigon' informally. Kransky 13:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Rob Church ^Talk 12:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

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Requested move

Ho Chi Minh City -> Hồ Chí Minh City Cultural imperialism to use German and Polish diacritics and not Vietnamese double diacritics. See also Talk:Ho Chi Minh

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Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

• Oppose: the city name is never written with diacritics in English. Even the official website for the city uses the non-diacritics version. DHN 02:05, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Never is too strong. I get about 15,000 English Google hits. The stripped version is certainly much more common, though. It is perhaps also worth mentioning that some other .vn government websites use diacritics in the city name. [1] - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:32, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Support I am curious though, who requested to move this, how come that user is not voting? Gryffindor 12:39, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

  It's normally assumed that the person who requested a move, in this case an anon, is in favour of it - they don't normally have to list themselves in the voting section too (although it does help if they sign the nomination...) sjorford #£@%&$?! 16:07, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose En:Wikipedia is supposed to be in English. Neither ồ nor í are English characters. --Henrygb 21:18, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • We already have another article on a capital city with í: Reykjavík. I think this is what the person proposing the move sees as an inconsistency. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:32, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose This is an instance of WP:Point. English usage should prevail; when you have convinced the community of English speakers, WP will change. (For what it's worth, I oppose the imposition of German and Polish spellings too.) Septentrionalis 22:36, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think this is an attempt to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. It seems like a good faith proposal to me. It is also in line with a long-running survey on WP:UE on the use of diacritics in place names. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:36, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose: on the En-Wikipedia, stick with the spelling used most often in the English language. Jonathunder 14:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• STRONGLY oppose this absurd idea that using the English name is "imperialism". CDThieme 17:28, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Neutral. I can see arguments both ways but while we have Mexico City rather than México City I suppose we can live with the current location of this name without being too imperialistic :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 20:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. The "City" part of the name makes this an English name. I would have supported a move if it had been about some small town little known outside Vietnam. up◦land 09:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Use English, not a crazy character I can't even see on my computer. Via Egnatia
• Oppose. Mainly because of Uppland's reasoning (the name is clearly Englishised). Also because of font concerns. Eugene van der Pijll 22:25, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Use English spelling for a place that has an English version of the name. – Axman (☏) 04:34, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Use English on the English-language Wikipedia, jguk 09:14, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. What jguk said, with a lot of sympathy for Via Egnatia's point, as well. FWIW, I would oppose Lech Wałęsa over Lech Walesa, Reykjavík over Reykjavik, and most any other use of diacritics, as they are almost NEVER the 'most common' name used by native English speakers. Montreal and Quebec, for example, both lost their diacritics for that reason. Niteowlneils 05:39, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose This is an English Wikipedia entry. In English, we rarely use diacritics. Also, the name of the city in English is "Saigon" although "Ho Chi Minh City" (the translation of Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) is also generally understood.Timothy Horrigan (talk) 05:54, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

• A note on Haukurth's point on Mexico City. I would have thought Mexico City would be at Ciudad de México if we were going to use the native spelling, so if Ho Chi Minh City were to use native spelling then it would be at Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh. These two native spellings are just not used in English, so we use the English versions, which do not use diacritics in the names. English does have a name for this city, so why use the native spelling/name over the English one? Mark 12:51, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

We use English names where they exist (as in Mexico City) and native names where an English name doesn't exist (as in Kópavogur). - Haukur Þorgeirsson 14:38, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Request not fulfilled due to lack of consensus. Rob Church ^Talk 12:57, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

It looks to me as if there was a consensus - not to move to the diacritics form. --Henrygb 00:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Proposing split: Names of Ho Chi Minh City

The "Name" section of this article is bigger than anyone wants it to be, and takes up way too much space at the very beginning of the article. It should be split into a new article, similar to what's been done with many other articles. --dragfyre (talk 13:44, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It should be. Thach Nguyen (talk) 00:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

thanks for the support - can you think of any good references that could be used to expand the new article? I've got it in my sandbox right now, and figured I might beef it up a little before posting. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 01:26, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI: I've been working on this article for the past little while and think it should probably be moved into article space in the next few days. However, I think I'll probably add it as Names of Ho Chi Minh City rather than "Name", since the result will give an overview of several different names given to the city throughout history, much like Names of Vietnam. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 18:19, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, this is done. Please review the new article and improve it! (Edit: pending a procedural delete and recreation—I forgot to use a pagemove to create the new article.) I've tried to add as many references as I can, but it's still missing some; it could probably use a fair bit of editing since I'm not the best writer, either. (We may also want to integrate some of the references into this article, since the History section here is lacking a few.) --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 17:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

saigon!

why formerly saigon? its still called saigon!--97.100.146.210 (talk) 03:23, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Because the official name is Ho Chi Minh City. A lot of people in Russia and other parts of the world still refer to Volgograd by its old name of Stalingrad, and the city became famous when it was called by that name, but that still doesn't mean we list it under Stalingrad. 71.23.117.168 (talk) 23:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I was there a few months ago for work. The funny thing is that NO ONE calls it Ho Chi Minh City there. I imagine like Stalingrad, when the communists (if you go there you see they exist in mostly name only) fall out of power, it will revert to Saigon.--Panzertank (talk) 19:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

HCMC vs. Saigon

According to WP:COMMONNAME, it would seem to make sense that the article name should be called Saigon. "Saigon" predominates discussion of the city in English, and even most Vietnamese still call it "Sài Gòn". Since "Ho Chi Minh City" is only used in ultra-formal contexts either in the Anglosphere or in Vietnam, "Saigon" should be used. Just my opinion on the subject. - Gilgamesh (talk) 05:54, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The article says Sài Gòn is District 1, but this is a narrowly official usage. In my experience, when Vietnamese say "Sài Gòn" they generally mean the numbered districts, or urban part, of Ho Chi Minh City. (The suburbs surrounding the city are also officially part of HCMC.) Vietnamese may say "Sài Gòn", but they usually write something like "Tp. HCM". This is not a political issue, at least not in Vietnam. It is done simply to shorten the word from five syllables to two. Kauffner (talk) 05:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Saigon Railway Station is in District 3. So even in official usage, the word "Saigon" is not limited to District 1. In any case, I have already removed this claim. Kauffner (talk) 20:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Not that I'd want to try and quell legitimate debate, but isn't there some way we can draw up a tangible policy on the use of HCMC vs. Saigon, just to be done with it? Around half of the edits to this article are changing the lead's boldtext and the infobox title to "Saigon", whereupon someone quickly reverts, so obviously there's a significant number of people who want the article to use "Saigon", usually citing WP:COMMONNAME when they argue for change. It's just getting tiresome to read the same debate over and over again. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 17:10, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Their Ho Chi Minh City (former Saigon) That's Change in 1976 (After Vietnam War) Mfirza123 (talk) 06:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 2014

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. per WP:SNOW. No basis in policy given in proposal for this move which would be against WP:COMMONNAME, WP:NPOV, etc. See discussion. (non-admin closure) B2C 21:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

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Ho Chi Minh City → Saigon – The current name is an official name of the city. Since the fall of Saigon, part of the monstrous Second Indochina War (partially known as Vietnam War), the city was renamed this way, departure from "Saigon". Despite officiality, sources still use "Ho Chi Minh City" (named after Ho Chi Minh) and "Saigon". Myanmar was renamed to Burma. Why not the same for "Saigon"? After all, it has been named historically. George Ho (talk) 06:11, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

• That's a bizarre rationale for a renaming. Is there any evidence that "Saigon" is still overwhelmingly the more common name in English, when referring to the present time? That would be the only thing that could possibly serve as a justification for such a renaming. In the absence of that, obvious oppose. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:06, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose. Ho Chi Minh City is the WP:COMMONNAME. [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], etc. Zarcadia (talk) 12:50, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose We tend to prefer the more recent/current official name if it is widely used, and Ho Chi Minh City is widely used. It would be incredibly reactionary of us to go back to Saigon. In a search, most results for "Saigon" refer to districts (Little Saigon) or businesses (Saigon Restaurant) in the United States, not to the city in Vietnam. --MelanieN (talk) 18:03, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NPOV. The only rationale I can think of for this renaming involves some level of disdain for Vietnam's current government, which is inappropriate. Ho Chi Minh City is clearly the common name. Xoloz (talk) 20:56, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Won't be the best option as the current and official geographical name is the manual of style for this page title. ///EuroCarGT 20:59, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The second largest city in Vietnam

In terms of population (7.5 mil. vs 6.5 mil of Hanoi), urban area (500 km2 vs 200 km2 of Hanoi), urban population (5 mil. vs 2.5 of Hanoi), Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam. Hanoi is the largest in terms of total municipality area only.Genghiskhan (talk) 06:16, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

No-one uses Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam

I spent a long time in Hanoi, I have yet to hear a single person refer to the city as Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh, once I even called it as such and some people had no idea what I was talking about, much like how Wikipedia renamed the People's Republic of China to China, and the Republic of China to Taiwan (as both were seen as common names) I suggest that we should rename the article to Saigon as literally no-one in Vietnam uses the term Ho Chi Minh City to refer to it, in Hanoi you'll see the name Sai Gon pop up every 30 seconds, the name Ho Chi Minh city is probably used as much as people call Seoul Gim Il-Seyong City, I highly doubt that anyone in the city itself would use the formal name. --86.81.201.94 (talk) 18:30, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME

I live in Hanoi and literally no one ever calls it Chi Minh Ho City (Westernised for easier readability), it's always referred to as Saigon both locally and nationally, in fact most foreign travel agencies, news agencies and general literature refer to the city as Saigon, in fact if you'd ask a Viet person about "thanh pho ho chi minh" they would act in confusion, the name Saigon is the only known name to people both nationally and "international people" (nuoc ngoai / tays and other Asians), so I request a move as this name is completely unused, kind of like how Republic of China was moved to Taiwan, or how Burma is the name of the article despite most people calling it Myanmar in the news. The name literally makes no sense, here in Hanoi in every street corner we have "Saigon shops" and I can't remember anyone ever calling Saigon anything else, even in schools we learn to call it "Saigon" I must really contest this name as a violation of WP:COMMONNAME of the worst kind. --Hoang the Hoangest (talk) 06:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

It's not true to say that "literally no one ever calls it TPHCM". I really doubt any Vietnamese wouldn't know what "TPHCM" is; certainly in Saigon itself they do. On the other hand, it is correct to say that within Vietnam "Saigon" is by far the most common word colloquially and with businesses using the the city's name in their brands (and one can find plenty of secondary sources stating this); and I personally would much rather the article be titled "Saigon". That said, WP:COMMONNAME states that we use the name most common in English language scholarly (and newspapers etc.) literature, and I strongly suspect that this would turn out to be "Ho Chi Minh City" (certainly within Vietnam, both the Vietnamese and English media are notorious for, along with the government itself, being the only ones using "HCMC"). Someone with more time and inclination than me can investigate. Another thing to bear in mind is that "Saigon" and "HCMC" are not quite synonymous, really. "HCM City" is in reality a province: 75% of its area is rural, including the politically incorporated areas of Can Gio (a big freaking swamp, basically), Cu Chi (which has its own "district capital" or something), and so on. These wouldn't be included an informal reference to "Saigon" I shouldn't think (which would refer to the urban area itself). Another use of "Saigon" is also still to refer to a particular area of downtown (corresponding to the city when it was last officially designated as such). Like if someone is in Saigon/HCMC's District 10 and opines "let's go drinking in Saigon" he means a particular area of downtown (similar to Tokyo station area in Tokyo; City of London in London; and so on, I'd imagine). Otherwise, I've changed the WP:WEASEL-Y "some Vietnamese" statement in the lead. bridies (talk) 03:48, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Yep, the city is still called Saigon, but I always write it as HCMC — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lão Ngoan Đồng (talk • contribs) 14:13, 7 July 2016 (UTC)