Ho Chi Minh City, commonly known by its previous name, Saigon is the largest and most populous city in Vietnam, situated in Southern Vietnam. According to the 2019 census, Ho Chi Minh City has a population of over 8.9 million within the city proper and over 21 million within its metropolitan area. In the southeastern region, the city surrounds the Saigon River and covers about 2,061 square kilometres (796 square miles). Ho Chi Minh City is an economic and financial centre and plays an important role in the country's cultural and scientific developments. The other two main cities of Vietnam include Hanoi (the capital) in Northern Vietnam and Da Nang in Central Vietnam.

Etymology

Ho Chi Minh City has gone by several different names during its history, reflecting settlement by different ethnic, cultural and political groups. Originally a trading port city of the Khmer Empire known as Prey Nokor (Khmer: ព្រៃនគរ), it is still known as Prey Nokor to Cambodians today. In time, under the control of the Vietnamese, it was officially renamed Gia Dinh (嘉定), a name that was retained until the time of the French conquest in the 1860s, when it adopted the name Sài Gòn, westernized as Saïgon, although the city was still indicated as 嘉定 on Vietnamese maps written in Chữ Hán until at least 1891.

The current name, Ho Chi Minh City, was given after reunification in 1976 to honour Ho Chi Minh. Even today, however, the informal name of Sài Gòn remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora. However, there is a technical difference between the two terms: Sài Gòn is commonly used to refer to the city centre in District 1 and the adjacent areas, while Ho Chi Minh City refers more to the entire modern city with all its urban and rural districts.

Saigon

An etymology of Saigon (or Sài Gòn in Vietnamese) is that Sài is a Sino-Vietnamese word (Hán tự: 柴) meaning "firewood, lops, twigs; palisade", while Gòn is another Sino-Vietnamese word (Hán tự: 棍) meaning "stick, pole, bole", and whose meaning evolved into "cotton" in Vietnamese (bông gòn, literally "cotton stick", i.e., "cotton plant", then shortened to gòn). This name may refer to the many kapok plants that the Khmer people had planted around Prey Nokor, and which can still be seen at Cây Mai temple and surrounding areas. It may also refer to the dense and tall forest that once existed around the city, a forest to which the Khmer name, Prey Nokor, already referred.

Other proposed etymologies draw parallels from Tai-Ngon (堤 岸), the Cantonese name of Cholon, which means "embankment" (French: quais), and Vietnamese Sai Côn, a translation of the Khmer Prey Nokor (Khmer: ព្រៃនគរ). Prey means forest or jungle, and nokor is a Khmer word of Sanskrit origin meaning city or kingdom, and related to the English word 'Nation' – thus, "forest city" or "forest kingdom".

Truong Mealy (former director of King Norodom Sihanouk's royal Cabinet), says that, according to a Khmer Chronicle, The Collection of the Council of the Kingdom, Prey Nokor's proper name was Preah Reach Nokor (Khmer: ព្រះរាជនគរ), "Royal City"; later locally corrupted to "Prey kor", meaning "kapok forest", from which "Saigon" was derived ("kor" meaning "kapok" in Khmer and Cham, going into Vietnamese as "gòn").

Ho Chi Minh City

The current official name, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, adopted in 1976 and abbreviated TP.HCM, is translated as Ho Chi Minh City, abbreviated HCMC, and in French as Hô-Chi-Minh-Ville (the circumflex is sometimes omitted), abbreviated HCMV. The name commemorates Ho Chi Minh, the first leader of North Vietnam. This name, though not his given name, was one he favoured throughout his later years. It combines a common Vietnamese surname (Hồ, 胡) with a given name meaning "enlightened will" (from Sino-Vietnamese 志 明; Chí meaning 'will' or 'spirit', and Minh meaning 'light'), in essence, meaning "light-bringer". Nowadays, Saigon is commonly used to refer to the city's central business districts, whereas Ho Chi Minh City is used to refer to the whole city.

History

Khmer period

The earliest settlement in the area was a Funan temple at the location of the current Phụng Sơn Buddhist temple, founded in the 4th century AD. A settlement called Baigaur was established on the site in the 11th century by the Champa. Baigaur was renamed Prey Nokor during the Khmer empire, which meant "Forest City". An alternative name was Preah Reach Nokor which, according to a Khmer Chronicle, meant "Royal City". Prey Nokor grew on the site of a small fishing village and area of forest. This area is likely where modern Ho Chi Minh City now lies and was inhabited by Khmer people for centuries before the arrival of the Vietnamese.

Beginning in the early 17th century, colonization of the area by Vietnamese settlers gradually isolated the Khmer of the Mekong Delta from their brethren in Cambodia proper and resulted in their becoming a minority in the delta. In 1623, King Chey Chettha II of Cambodia (1618–28) allowed Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn civil war in Vietnam to settle in the area of Prey Nokor and to set up a customs house there. Increasing waves of Vietnamese settlers, which the Cambodian kingdom could not impede because it was weakened by war with Thailand, slowly Vietnamized the area. In time, Prey Nokor became known as Saigon. Prey Nokor was the most important commercial seaport to the Khmers. The loss of the city and the rest of the Mekong Delta cut off Cambodia's access to the East Sea. Subsequently, the only remaining Khmers' sea access was south-westerly at the Gulf of Thailand e.g. at Kampong Saom and Kep.

Nguyễn Dynasty rule

In 1698, Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyễn rulers of Huế by sea to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the area, thus detaching the area from Cambodia, which was not strong enough to intervene. He is often credited with the expansion of Saigon into a significant settlement. A large Vauban citadel called Gia Định was built by Victor Olivier de Puymanel, one of the Nguyễn Ánh's French mercenaries. The citadel was later destroyed by the French following the Battle of Kỳ Hòa (see Citadel of Saigon). Initially called Gia Dinh, the Vietnamese city became Saigon in the 18th century.

French colonial era

Colonized by France in 1859, and ceded to France by the 1862 Treaty of Saigon, the city was influenced by the French during their colonisation of Vietnam, and a number of classical Western-style buildings and French villas in the city reflect this. Saigon had, in 1929, a population of 123,890, including 12,100 French.

In 1931, a new région called Saïgon–Cholon consisting of Saïgon and Cholon was formed. Saïgon and Cholon, meanwhile, remained separate cities with their respective mayors and municipal councils. In 1956, after South Vietnam's independence from France in 1955, the région of Saïgon–Cholon became a single city called Saïgon following the merger of the two cities of Saïgon and Cholon.

Republic of Vietnam era

The Viet Minh proclaimed the independence of Vietnam in 1945 after a combined occupation by Vichy France and Japan, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. The Viet Minh-held sections of Vietnam were more concentrated in rural areas. Following the death of Franklin Roosevelt and the abandonment of anti-colonialist policies, the U.S. (in an attempt to control the spread of communism) supported France in regaining its control over the country, with effective control spanning mostly in the Southern half and parts of the Red River Delta region like Hanoi, Haiphong and Thái Bình.

Former Emperor Bảo Đại made Saigon the capital of the State of Vietnam in 1949 with himself as head of state. In 1954, the Geneva Agreement partitioned Vietnam along the 17th parallel (Bến Hải River), with the communist Việt Minh, under Ho Chi Minh, gaining complete control of the northern half of the country, while the Saigon government continued to govern the State of Vietnam which continued in the southern half of the country and the southern half gaining independence from France. The State officially became the Republic of Vietnam when Bảo Đại was deposed by his Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm in the 1955 referendum. Saigon and Cholon, an adjacent city with mostly Sino-Vietnamese residents, were combined into an administrative unit known as the Đô Thành Sài Gòn (Capital City Saigon), or Thủ đô Sài Gòn (National Capital Saigon).

South Vietnam was a capitalist and anti-communist state which fought against the communist North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong proxy forces during the Vietnam War, with the assistance of the United States and other countries. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, on the other hand, were supported by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, communist forces launched a failed attempt to capture the city. On 30 April 1975, Saigon fell, ending the Vietnam War with a victory for North Vietnam.

Post-Vietnam War and today

In the conclusion of the Vietnam War on 29 April 1975, the city came under the control of the Vietnamese People's Army. The event has both been described as the "Fall of Saigon", and the "Liberation of Saigon". In 1976, upon the establishment of the unified communist Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the city of Saigon (including the Cholon area), the province of Gia Ðịnh and two suburban districts of two other nearby provinces were combined to create Ho Chi Minh City, in honour of the late Communist leader Hồ Chí Minh. However, the former name Saigon is still widely used by the Vietnamese, in informal contexts. Generally, the term Saigon refers only to the urban districts of Ho Chi Minh City.