One of the most important aspects of Vietnamese culture is filial piety. Filial piety is the duty of a child towards his or her parents. As a young child, one must obey one's parents. When they are old, one must care for them. After they pass away, one must honor their memory by worshipping them. At all times, a filial child should be grateful to his or her parents for raising and teaching them. There is a Vietnamese saying that can be very roughly translated as: Our father's hard work is like Mount Thai Son, The gratitude we owe our mother is like water flowing from its source. This means that the credit our father deserves for raising us is as great as Mount Thai Son, a mountain in China, and our gratitude towards our mother should be as inexhaustible as the source of a river. This saying is meant to remind people to be grateful to their parents for bringing them into this world and caring for them.    

The traditional Vietnamese family commonly has three generations living under the same roof: the paternal grandparents, parents, and children. Young women leave their homes when they marry and resettle in their husbands' homes. When a young man marries, his wife moves in with him and his family. Vietnamese children usually grow up in an extended family of paternal relatives including his or her parents, grandparents, father's brothers and unmarried sisters, and cousins. Unlike in a modern American family, Vietnamese children live with their parents their entire life, except for daughters who leave their homes when they marry and start families of their own. Long ago, an entire patriarchal family lived in the same village with young men marrying women from neighboring villages and young women leaving the village when they marry. Also according to tradition, the father's duty is to work and provide for his family while the mother cares for the children and does the chores at home. The Vietnamese believe that relatives must care for one another, the strong protecting the weak, and parents must be willing to make sacrifices for their children.

That is the picture of the ideal traditional family, but the typical modern family has changed much. Many young couples like to have their own homes instead of living with their parents. The wife usually still goes to live with her husband's family, but some husbands move in with their wives' families. Since traditional times, Vietnamese woman have sometimes had to join their husbands in working to provide for their children because their husbands either did not earn enough or did not care to look after the family. Today, approaching equality between the sexes, it has become common practice for women to work, and the man is no longer the head of the family with total control as he once was. Because earning a living sometimes forces people to travel extensively, because of war, and because people have been forced to become refugees, many Vietnamese families now live far apart from each other. But when circumstances allow it, the Vietnamese still like to live near their family and relatives. One thing that has not changed is that the Vietnamese continue to have respect for love of family and continue to honor filial piety above all.  

Relatives and the Vietnamese Kinship System of Pronouns  

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The Vietnamese kinship system of pronouns expresses a hierarchical structure of kinship. Relatives are divided into two sides: the noi, or paternal, part on the father's side of the family and the ngoai, or maternal, part on the mother's side of the family. Noi also means "within," and ngoai also means "on the outside." Paternal relatives are called "within" and maternal relatives called "on the outside" because paternal relatives are of the same surname (last name) while maternal relatives are of a different one.

Furthermore, a long time ago, Vietnamese children often lived with their paternal relatives while their maternal relatives were of another village, making paternal relatives seem closer than maternal ones. Vietnamese pronouns differentiate seniority for relatives more clearly than English pronouns do. The children of one's parents' older siblings are called anh ho and chi ho, which means "older brother by surname" and "older sister by surname." The children of one's parents' younger siblings are called em ho, which means "younger sibling by surname." These pronouns apply regardless of whether chi ho, one's older sister by surname, is much younger than oneself. That shows that one has less seniority than one's anh ho or chi ho and more seniority than one's em ho. English, in comparison, only has the one word "cousin" to collectively describe the children of all of one's parents' siblings without differentiating seniority or sex. A parent's older brother or sister and a parent's younger sibling also have different terms, unlike in English where an aunt or uncle can be the older or younger sibling of the parent.

This hierarchical kinship system of pronouns is also applied to outsiders. One uses the appropriate pronouns depending on whether the person is the same age as oneself or one's grandparents, parents, children, or grandchildren. For example, for people older or of the same age as one's parents, the appropriate pronoun could be bac, meaning parent's older brother or sister. If the person is younger than one's parents, the appropriate pronoun could be chu or co, meaning father's younger brother or sister. People of the same age as one's grandparents can be called ong, ba, or cu, which are various pronouns for grandparents and great-grandparents. Another aspect of Vietnamese culture is that relatives (related by blood) are not allowed to marry, even if the relationship is distant. Unlike some cultures that allow first cousins to marry, Vietnamese morality does not accept relatives marrying.

List of Kinship Pronouns  [back to top]

N = North, S = South The North and South have different accents as well as slightly different kinship pronouns.
Since the accents of Vietnamese words are not given, please note that Ba, meaning father, is actually spelled differently from Ba, meaning grandmother. Bo (N), Thay (N, rarely used), Cau (N, rarely used), Ba (S), Tia (S) = father
Me (N), Mo (N), Ma (S) = mother
Con = child 

Con trai = son 

Con gai = daughter
Anh = older brother
Chi = older Sister
Em = younger sibling
Chong = husband
Vo = wife

According to Vietnamese custom, siblings often call each other by their rank according to seniority, although more Northern families use name than seniority. Seniority here is used as a rough translation of thu, meaning the different ages of siblings; seniority comes in ranks, whether eldest, second, third, etc., or youngest. According to the Northern style, the firstborn sibling is called anh ca or chi ca, meaning eldest brother or eldest sister. The following siblings are known by their rank: second, third, fourth, etc. In the southern system, probably due to avoiding the term huong ca, or the village mayor, there is no ca rank. Instead, the firstborn sibling is called anh hai or chi hai (second brother or second sister), followed by the third, fourth, fifth, etc.

Ong noi, ba noi: paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother
Ong ngoai, ba ngoai: maternal grandfather, maternal grandmother 

Ong co noi, ba coi noi: either grandfather's father, either grandfather's mother
Ong co ngoai, ba co ngoai: either grandmother's father, either grandmother's mother

 "Either grandfather" or "either grandmother" means that the explanation applies to both the maternal and paternal grandparent. In the Northern system, people use the pronoun chau, meaning grandchild, for themselves when speaking to their grandparents. They call their grandparents ong and ba (grandfather and grandmother). In the Southern system, people use the pronoun con, which means child, when speaking to their grandparents. They call their paternal grandparents noi, meaning paternal, and their maternal grandparents ngoai, meaning maternal.

Ong bac: either grandfather's older brother
Ba bac (N), Ba co (S): either grandfather's older sister 

Ong chu: either grandfather's younger brother Ba co: either grandfather's younger sister
Ong bac (N), Ong cau (S): either grandmother's older brother
Ba bac (N), Ba di (S): either grandmother's older sister 

Ong cau: either grandmother's younger brother
Ba di: either grandmother's younger sister 

These are only the formal terms for these relations, used when describing them in the third person.
In the Northern system, grandchildren call the grandparents' sibling ong and ba. When speaking of them in the third person, the grandchild uses their name following the word ong or ba.

For the grandparents' brothers, the men's own names are used. For grandparents' sisters, the women's husbands' names are used (for example: if one's ba bac, or grandfather's older sister, marries a man named Phong, one would call her husband and her Ong Phong and Ba Phong). In the informal, familiar style of the Southern system, a paternal grandfather's siblings are called using this pattern: paternal grandfather/grandmother + the person's sibling rank. That means his siblings are called ong noi hai, ba noi ba, ong noi tu, etc. (second paternal grandfather, third paternal grandmother, fourth paternal grandfather, etc.). The siblings of the rest of one's grandparents follow the same rule. (In the South, the "second" rank sibling is the eldest.)

Bac: father's older brother or his wife

Bac (N), Co (S): father's older sister
Bac (N), Duong (S): father's older sister's husband
Chu: father's younger brother 

Thim: father's younger brother's wife
Co: father's younger sister 

Chu (N), Duong (S): father's younger sister's husband
Bac (N), Cau (N): mother's older brother Mo: mother's older brother's wife Bac (N), Di (S): mother's older sister Bac (N), Duong (S): mother's older sister's husband
Cau: mother's younger brother 

Mo: mother's younger brother's wife 

Di: mother's younger sister
Chu (N), Duong (S): mother's younger sister's husband

The same pronouns are used for one's parents' first cousins as for their siblings. Anh ho, Chi ho: male children of parents' older siblings, female children of parents' older siblings 

Em ho: children of parents' younger siblings

Con dau: daughter-in-law
Con re: son-in-law 

Chau: sibling's children, first cousins' children
Chau re: husband of sibling's daughter or husband of first cousins' daughter
Chau dau: wife of sibling's son or wife of first cousins' son 

Anh re: older sister's husband
Em re: younger sister's husband
Chi dau: older brother's wife Em dau: younger brother's wife
Anh vo, chi vo, em vo: wife's older brother, wife's older sister, wife's younger sibling

Anh chong, chi chong, em chong: husband's older brother, husband's older sister, husband's younger sibling

Chau noi: son's children
Chau ngoai: daughter's children
Chau re: granddaughter's husband
Chau dau: grandson's wife
Chat (N), Chau co (S): great-grandchildren
Chut (N), Chau co co (S): great-great-grandchildren
Chit (N), unsure of Southern terminology: great-great-great-grandchildren