A group of girls graduating from high school decided to use their yearbook to answer a question they probably get all the time.
It reads: “WE ARE NOT RELATED.”
It’s a take on an old meme that has been shared on Imgur, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook for years:
And as some Imgur commenters noted, “Nguyen is like Smith.” However, that’s not exactly true, as Nguyen is by far the most common Vietnamese family name, with some estimates saying that 40 percent of Vietnamese people have the surname. For example, the current prime minister of the country is Nguyen Tan Dung.
One commenter wrote: “My friend wants to know how this last name is properly pronounced. Let’s help him out.”
According to IB Times:
The surname Nguyen is believed to have originated in the Chinese surname “Ruan” (in the Mandarin language) or Yuen (Cantonese), owing to China’s long domination over Vietnam. Periodically, during both periods of Chinese rule as well as Vietnamese dynastic power in Vietnam, the name Nguyen was either forced upon the public (sometimes by threat of violence and even pain of death) by new regimes or adopted by the subjects voluntarily for various reasons.
And by the early 19th century, the Nguyen Dynasty took power, prompting a wave of surname changes. It ruled until the end of World War II.
