MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8,2010

Yuan: Whafsin a xenonym?

COMMENT
SOPHAL EAR AND KENNETH T SO
A version of this article first appeared in
Vietnamese in the onUne journal. TaIawM
(Autumn 20091
S
OMEONEOJlCesaid. "Ibunder-
stand others. )OU must fust
understand youn;el["We bell"",
that understanding the Khmer
language alone and living in Cambodia
is necessary but not sullicient to truly
open up the Khmer soul to non-
Khmers. Khmemess is spealdng the lan-
guage, understanding Khmer idioms,
appreciating Khmer jokes and their
nuances, and enjoying Khmer music
and poetry. It is a feeling that resonates
with Khmer people living in Cambodia.
Being Khmer should not be synony-
mous with Pol Pot. The actions that Pol
Pot committed are complete anathema
to the Khmer soul. A I<1uner is someone
who is proud of the civilization that
Angkor has left as its legacy.
The Khmer have lived Wlder threat of
extinction (perhaps even saved by
French colonialism), and who have wit-
nessed the disappearance of Khmer ter-
ritory to their powerful neighbors, Viet-
nam and Thailand. This is the context
within which we write.
As Ronnie Ylmsut has elaborated in a
2005 online essay: "These [invader] per-
ceptions aboutVietnam are also quite
valid, historicalJy speaking. The so-
called Kampuchea Krom (area in ...
southern Vietnam including Ho Chi
Minh City and the Mekong delta
region), and the former "lGngdom of
Otampa" (area in northern Vietnam)
are two historical examples of success-
ful Vietnamese annexation and expan-
sionism."
Pol Kmlgwrote in a 2004 article, "Dur-
ingtheperiod 1813-15, Vletnameseper-
petrated the infamous massacre known
to every Khmer as prayat Iwmpup '"
ong. Itinvolve<i the most barbarous tor
ture technique, in which the Khmer
were buried alive up to their neck. Their
heads were used as the stands for a
wood stove to boil waterfor the Viet-
namese masters.
Let us consider only the issue oflan-
guage and the word used by Cambodi-
ans for the people oMetnam: yuan.
1bis remains a bone of contention
because many non-Khmer haw argued
that the word is fundamentalJy racist in
common parlance.
The word yuan may have come from
thewordyueh, \\tIa( the Mandarin Clli-
nese caIlVietnam, yueh nam. The word
TUlm means south in Chinese. Yueh
indicates the name of the people of that
region. Therefore. yueh means Viet or
VIetnamese in Olin .... and yueh nom
means the yueh people of the south. In
this case. south means south ofOlina.
South Vietnam pronounces it yroknam.
Otou Th-Kuan (Zhou Daguan), the
celebrated Chinese ambassador to
Cambodia in the 13th century. indicat-
ed in his report that there was already a
large population of Olinese setding in
Cambodia at that time. He said that the
Chinese preferred life in the Khmer
Empire because it WdS easier than in
China. There were a lot ofOtinese men
marrying the native Cambodian wom-
en. The word)'llOn may have derived
from the Chinese word yueh to indicate
the Vietnamese.
Geotge Coedes, an expert on South-
eastAsia, found evidence of the word
yuan inscribed in Khmer on a stele dat-
ing to the time of the Khmer IGng
Suryavarman I (1002-1050). AdMmar
Leclere. a colonial French governor of
Cambodia \\tIo lived there 25 years,
used the word yuan throughout his
book Hismire du Cnmbodge depuit Ie
ler sikle de IW!1fI ere (Ilbrairie Paul
Geuthner,1914: 99,413, 432, 434, 435,
and 469).
While yuan has been equated with
the word "savage" by David Roberts in a
2002 article for the Washington Times,
in fact, the word savage in Cambodian
translates to pourk pff!J' or phlwng
(which unfortunately also refers to an
ethnic hill tribe minority living in Cam-
bodia). Cambodians caIlVietnamese
yuan the same way they call Indian
khieung, Burmese plwumea, French
bamng and Olinese chen. These are all
xenonyms and Khmer transliterations.
When the Vietnamese sometimes call
Khmer people ngoi mien (\\tIen they
should use ngoi campuchia), this is
inaccurate because the word mien is
the name for a minority group that is
not ethnically Khmer. According to the
Mien Network (http://www.mieIUlet-
work.com/miencommWlity/history.
html), "The Mien are a sub-group ofthe
Yao in China, and they originated from
Southwest China According to 1995
population figures published by the
Thbal Research Institute of Clliang Mai,
there are over 40,000 Mien living in 173
villages in Northern Thailand. larger
munbers are found in Laos (85,000) and
Vietnam (474,000), with the majority
still in China. Accotding to the 1990
census, there are about 2.1 millionYao
living in China"
Thus, it would be like saying of an
FngIishman that he is Basque. The
geographyis completely off, but the
possible colUlOtation may be of a
nation without a state. In the lace 17th
century. the VIetnamese court of Hue
changed the names of the Cambodian
princessesAng Mei, Ang Pen, Ang Peou
and Ang Snguon to the Vietnamese-
sounding names ofNgoc-van, Ngoc-bi-
en, Ngoc-tu, and Ngoc-nguyen. respec-
tively. Phnom Penh is also known in
Vietnamese as Nam Vang.lndeed, our
venerated Phnom Penh noodles are
otherwise advertised in Vietnamese as
heu tiev nam vang. Moreover, while we
call Chao Doc and Saigon (\\tIat is now
HCMO Mot Chmuk and Prey Noknr,
respectively, this is the equivalent phe-
nomenon in use when it comes to the
word yuon. that ofaxenonym in cur-
rent use.
We sunnise thaf confusion over the
word yuon arises from the fact that the
word Vietnam(ese) exists. The misWl-
derstanding is that for Khmer people to
opt for using the word yuon instead of
thewordVietn.am(ese) gives non-
Khmer the impression that we are rac-
ists. To say this would be the equivalent
of saying that anyone who uses the
word Cambodian instead of Khmer is
racist.
When we speak in Khmer, iJ is very
awkward and does not sound right to
the ear to use the word Vietnam, and
even less so Vietnamese. However,
\\tIen we speak in English or French, it
is more natural to use the word Viet-
namese or Vretnamien. and it would
become awkward to use the word.,
yuan.
For example, ifwe want to say that
"fishermen are mostly Vietnamese", and
both words. yuan and Vietnamese, are
used in a Ktuner sentence, the result
would be as follows: pourlc 1II!a/c nisart
trey keu chreun re youn, or pourk 1II!a/c
nisart trey keu chreun re clwun chear
vietnam. It therefore requires more I:tyl-
lables to use the word Vietnam to
descnbe the Vietnamese becauSe we
have to say clwun cheat vietnam (liter-
ally National ofVietnam) to describe a
Vietnamese person. We cannot say
pourk 1II!a/c nisart trey keu chreun re
vietnam because Vietnam is a country.
In Khmer, the word Vietnamese per se
does not exist un1ess one uses the word
yuan.
It is rare in the Khmer language to
have a racist word attributed to different
ethnic groups. this does not
RICan that salty language does not exist.
To the contrary, when wishing to disre-
spect someone, we add an adjective ";f'
in front of the word that we mtend to
use. If we say a yuon, then it is a sign of
disrespect, but not necessarily a racist
remark. To be racist requires that the
foUowing words be used: a kamp
(equating a Vietnamese to a diaper), a
gnieung (a probable play on the com-
mon Vietnamese family name Nguyen)
or a sakei daung (equating a Vietnam-
ese to a coconut husk). Some might
compare the word yuon to the word
"nigger", but that is too strong and ahis-
torica1 a comparison. In any case, to
have called someone in 1860 racist for
using the word nigger would be histori-
cally inaccurate. These were conven-
tions then. and evolved out of fashion
later.
The only basis to this is when, dwing
the Lon Nol period (Khmer Republic
1970-1975),yuan was indeed used ina
derogatory fashion during attacks on
Vietnamese people. Thus, the word
took on a negative connotation in the
19708 and was allegedly banned in the
19808 \\tIen Cambodia was occupied by
Vietnam. Sour Vietnamese soup, samlar
I
machou yuan, became samlar machou
vietnam, but reverted to its
name in the 19905. Of course, the
Khmer Rouge also used the word yuan,
as when they characterised the United
Nations ThmsitionalAuthority in Cam-
bodia (UNThO as yuan- TAC, an agent
oftheVletnamese-backedCambodian
People's Party. But again, just because
the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer
Republicans hijacked the word does not
mean it must now be abandoned in
everyday language.
The views expressed in this article are
authors' alone and do not represent the
views ofthe;r employers or the US govern-
ment.
SopMl brilH ..... III profHaor of natIoMI
.......,_In_,CotiCarnI.L_
TSo Ia ............. nd ICbm ... historiIilL