NAMES and GOALS
NAMES
On Sunday, June 15, 1975, we arrived at Hillsboro, Oregon, to start our new life in our new country. My wife Danielle and I thought it appropriate to modify our names as a way of adapting to the new situation.
Birth certificates in Vietnam list on the first line Clan and Name of the newborn. My clan or family name is Tran and my given name is Long. Since my family had been Catholic for many generations, I was baptized at the Phatdiem Cathedral and given the patron saint name of Peter. However, this baptismal name was used for religious purpose only, never in civilian life.
According to Vietnamese mythology, Lac Long (Lord Dragon) was the civilizing hero of prehistoric Vietnam. His reign was said to have been a golden age. Lac Long married a fairy named Au Co who gave birth to a hundred boys. Thus mythologically and originally, Vietnam had only one hundred clans. Today in Vietnam there are no more than 300 clan names, of which the three most common are Tran, Le, and Nguyen. The family name Nguyen is by far the predominant in number. There is a historical reason for this predominance. In 1224 the ninth and last monarch of the Ly dynasty, a seven-year-old girl, was under the tutelage of General Tran thu Do, Commander of the Vietnamese Armed Forces. This general arranged the marriage of the young queen to his nephew, Tran Canh. Thus the political power passed from the decadent Ly dynasty to the emergent Tran dynasty. All members of the deposed dynasty, as well as all others whose clan name was Ly, were ordered to assume the clan name Nguyen. With this clan-purging stratagem, Tran thu Do hoped to eradicate Ly dynasty and to eliminate all possibility of its being restored.
A full Vietnamese name usually consists of three elements: first the clan or family name, then an intermediary particle, and last the given or personal name. To honor one’s ancestors, Vietnamese tradition reserves the first position to the clan or family name. Thus the clan name should always be written first, that is, in front of the given name. Both clan and given names are properly capitalized, whereas the intermediary particle is usually not. Perhaps this particle, also called a buffer word, stands in between to shield the individual person from the resplendent and venerable awesomeness of the clan.
To add further to the confusion, some clan chiefs in the past decided to create compound family names by joining their paternal and maternal clan names, thus Tran-Le. Furthermore, some parents like to bestow a compound given name to their child, such as Kim-Son (Golden Mountain) for a boy or Ai-Lien (Adorable Lotus) for a girl.
Under almost all circumstances in daily life, a person is referred to by his or her personal name. People would address me as Mr. Long, though my family name is Tran. I may also be referred to as Mr. Tran Long, to avoid confusion with a Mr. Phan Long. In naming me, my parents did me a favor by omitting the intermediary particle. Thus I have just two elements in my full name, a light load to carry around. In Vietnam I had always written my full name as Tran Long. When I graduated from the University of Portland in 1954, I had the name Tran Long correctly inscribed on the diploma at my insistence. Unfortunately, when I obtained my master’s degree from Syracuse University, I failed to insist and my name was incorrectly written as Long Tran on my diploma. I am still bothered by this inversion each time I think of it or look at this diploma. Bothered because, by looking at my personal name placed ahead of my clan name, I have an uneasy feeling of being disrespectful to my ancestors.
I treasure my name greatly. Tran is one of the four great dynasties of Vietnam, reigning from 1225 to 1400, the other three being Ly (1010-1224), Le (1427-1788), and Nguyen (1802-1945). In Vietnamese, Long means Dragon, the national symbol of Vietnam. Vietnamese often refer to themselves as children and grandchildren of Dragon (Lac Long) and Fairy (Au Co). By linking the two together, I created a new family name Tranlong, a distinct name, not to be confused with any other Tran. For given names, we used our baptismal or Christian names; thus, Peter, Danielle, James P., Ann M., Perpetua B., Theresa C., Michael C., Luke A., Faustina D., and Veronica E. Tranlong.
In July 1975 when we met again with Andy and Eve Andrews in San Francisco, Andy told me that the names Perpetua and Faustina might create problems for our daughters. He was ethnically Portuguese and, at birth, was given the name Julio. During his grade school years he suffered the taunting of other children, who chanted “Who, Who, Who? Who Lee Oh!” Later he adopted his nickname Andy. Fortunately, Peppy and Tina with their shortened names have not gone through such an experience.
Though used in all our health, school, and work records from June 1975 on, our new names did not become official until June 1981, when we received our Certificates of Naturalization. No longer paroled Resident Aliens, we are American citizens, by our own choice. Yes, Americans of Vietnamese Extraction – (Rarae) Aves. Rare birds!
GOALS
When was I first aware of goals? I don’t quite know. I only remember that, many times in the past, my curiosity led me astray and I forgot what I was after. I lost sight of my goals -- short-range, middle-range, and long-range.
I started learning the Vietnamese ABC’s at six, French at eight, and Latin at ten. I still remember vividly my French Larousse Dictionary. In my pre-teen and early teen years, I spent at least one hour with it almost every day. While reading French texts, anytime I ran into an unknown word, I would consult my dictionary. That’s when oftentimes I got lost in it, because I found such interesting words as electrocution and electrocardiogramme. By the time I finished with the definition and illustration for these two words, I had forgotten the word that first sent me to the dictionary. The more I tried to retrieve it, the deeper it sank into my subconscious. I had such a short span of memory. Hours later, my lost word popped up: elephantesque. Eureka!
The summer I was ten, I visited a French family for the first time. Fr. Emmanuel Jacques, a Belgian priest, who tried to get me interested in priesthood, gave me a ride on his motorcycle for an excursion, perhaps a 30-kilometer round trip, on a gravel country road. On the way back we stopped at a French customhouse-cum-residence for a visit. We were treated to cakes and lemonade. I had a chance to try my French on two blonde girls my age or younger. I decided then and there that I would one day go to France to further my education and to meet French girls. That was my goal.
In 1945, after the two atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender, Vietnam declared its independence. I was a high school student in Hanoi, capital of the reborn and newly independent Vietnam. Revolutionary spirit was high. I participated in several school meetings and street demonstrations against the French, who were trying to reconquer their lost colonies and protectorates. I was struck by two banners bearing the slogans “Vietnam to the Vietnamese” and “Give Us Liberty or Give Us Death.” Up to that time the term Vietnam was not even in the French dictionary. To the French, Vietnam did not exist. What did exist was French Indochina, consisting of five ill-gotten possessions, namely, Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Laos, and Cambodia. Pejorative geographical names, yoked onto our necks by foreign conquerors. I did not know English. But once those slogans were explained to me, they sounded like music to my ears. I decided then and there to learn English and, if possible, to go to England or the United States to learn this beautiful language. That was my goal.
After six years of study in France and the United States, I returned to Vietnam toward the end of 1955. The country had been divided into two by the French colonialists and the Vietnamese communists with the sanction of Red China and the Soviet Union. My parents, brothers and sisters had fled North Vietnam and resettled in or near Saigon, South Vietnam. My goals in returning to Vietnam were to use my knowledge and education to help my parents and siblings resettle in their new surroundings and to participate in the social and economic development of South Vietnam. For nineteen years, first as a newspaperman, then a business manager, a military officer, a college professor, and a university administrator, I had tried my utmost to attain these goals and I had largely succeeded, until the country was taken over by the communists in April 1975. Who could tell what would have happened if South Vietnam had managed to last until the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union?
Coming back to Portland, Oregon, in June 1975, I spent months looking for full-time employment and finally landed a job in the audit department of Far West Federal Savings. I started this job on Monday, April 26, 1976, three days shy of the first anniversary of our escape from Saigon. In December 1976, one of the exercises I had to go through at Far West was to write down my personal and career goals. I kept a copy of this exercise in my personal papers. I jotted down one of my goals as follows:
“I’m now 48 and my wife Danielle is 43. Both of us are college graduates and now holding jobs, after almost twenty years spent away from the U.S. We came back to this country about one and a half years ago and brought with us eight children, aged now from 17 down to 3 years. The five girls and three boys are in good physical and mental health, and rather well endowed intellectually.
“Our long-range goal for the next twenty years is to help these eight young persons develop into good, solid, responsible, and productive citizens of their new country through both a good family life and a formal college education.”
Our youngest daughter Veronica was the last to graduate from college in May 1994. As of this writing, April 1997, twenty-two years after our narrow escape from the communists, our eight children are holding professional positions in engineering, law, accountancy, high technology, and pharmacy.
I have attained one goal. Score One for me. Thank you.
1. Bio-Sketch, Evacuees - February 1997
2. Refugees, Parolees - March 1997 3. Names, Goals - April 1997 4. Homes, Addresses - April 1997 5. Birthdays, Angels - May 1997 6. Tongues, Spirits - May 1997 7. Scoops, Phoenix - September 1997 * Encounter of a kind 8. Charmer, Anthill - September 1997 9. Sand Crabs, Children, Sons-in-law - October 1997 10. Careers, Idealism, Titles - October 1997 11. Calendars, Customs - November 1997 12. Notables, Jobs, Missions - December 1997 |
13. [University of Dalat] Politics, Professors, Group Study… - December 1997
14 - Family, Parents - Sibling, Roots 15. Money, Cars, Drivers 16 - Controls - Grand-Children, Generations - Bananas 17 - Ancestors, Turtledoves - Transients, Ashes, Immortals - Migrants, Nature, Colors 18 - Nuts, Guts, Offices, Stones - November, Talents, Journeys 19. Eulogy to Yvonne |