The Study of Dragonflies and Saigon

The study of dragonflies contains just as much mystery as the study of Saigon

I thought I loved entomology, but recently discovered this is not true.

My natural enemy is the mozzie therefore I hate entomology (insects, and the study of). What I’ve meant all along is I love etymology (etymos ‘true’ and logia ‘study of’) – the true origin of words.

Etymology is a nerdy pursuit, but when travelling can help you fumble your way through other languages. I know some Chinese, French and even Japanese because when each of those countries controlled Vietnam, they influenced our language. For example, the Vietnamese pho originates from the French feu (fire).

English is a second language to me, so I’ve always been fascinated by Western words and phrases. Growing up, I guessed meanings of words based on their context, or consulted my dictionary and phrasal verbs guide.

The latter helped me understand otherwise nonsensical sayings like, “the cat’s out of the bag”. I used to wonder who put the cat in the bag in the first place? Was it the same person who decided there’s “no room to swing a cat”? These were difficult phrases to understand from a Vietnamese point of view (we would have eaten the cat).

To a Vietnamese person there is an expectation that every word meaning has a direct meaning, even names. Introduce yourself as Mr. Meunier, Moulin, Mueller, Molenaar, Molinaro, or Molnár we expect you to know you once descended from millers. To Vietnamese people names have straightforward meaning. Most of the time.

Not even the best etymologist can shed light on the origin of the name Sài Gòn. Used informally since 1620, no one really knows where the the word Sài Gòn came from. Scholars can’t decide if it’s Sino-Vietnamese, Cantonese or Khmer and, therefore, what it really means. Any of the six theories below could be true*:

1. Ceiba tree (Sino-Viet for ceiba cây gòn, 12 metre tall cotton trees common in ancient times)
2. Forest of ceiba (Cantonese sài / wood and Sino-Viet gòn / cotton, but it’s rare two languages combine and syntactically it should be gòn sài)
3. Wood Forest (imagined from the Cantonese sài for wood and gòn for tree)
4. Embankment (the Cantonese name for Chợ Lớn is Tài Ngôn which means embankment)
5. Ceiba forest embankment (this throws theories 1 through 4 together)
6. Forest kingdom (suggests a translation from the former Khmer name for the city; Prey Nokor)

While there is a common thread, we’ll never know for sure what the true origin is. The etymological quest for the origin of Sài Gòn is like my entomological ones in this city. When I try to photograph a dragonfly (the natural predator of the mozzie), you can only get so close before they fly off. The thing you want gently buzzes away, just out of reach.

*summary based on Sài Gòn by Hữu Ngọc.