Migration, Integration, and Nationalism in Historical Context
by dchph
Vietnam is remembered in history in a singular way for having three times repelled the Mongol invasions led by Genghis Khan and his successors, conquerors who had previously destroyed the Song Dynasty and established the Yuan Dynasty (元朝) over China, a regime that endured for nearly a century.
Within this context, Vietnam’s hard‑won independence was preserved only through the steadfast patriotism of its people, from which emerged a distinctly resilient form of nationalism. This fierce nationalism shaped their anthropological identity, including their ethnolinguistic consciousness. It helps explain why many Vietnamese reject a racial affiliation with the Han and instead affirm ancestral ties to the ancient Yue peoples, a lineage outside the Han sphere. This is also why some Western scholars, when proposing credible hypotheses aligned with Austroasiatic theories, find support among many Vietnamese patriots today.
However, Vietnam’s history has been shaped not only by resistance to northern domination but also by continuous waves of refugees and migrants, including successive influxes of Chinese fleeing turmoil or settling across generations. This long‑standing exchange, one that continues to the present, has profoundly shaped Vietnamese ethnic identity and the distinctive character of their language.
I) National identity and linguistic formation
Vietnam is an ethnically diverse country, and all the elements absorbed into its cultural “melting pot” have fused into what is now the Vietnamese people, regardless of whether their origins were Dai, Zhuang, Hmong, Chinese, Chăm, or Khmer. The nation’s history is essentially a chronicle of the descendants of the ancient Yue who came here either as conquerors, migrants, or refugees fleeing poverty and oppression from the north. Their long southward journey, which eventually reached the southern tip of the Indochinese Peninsula, stretched across nearly a millennium. Throughout this period territorial expansion, they fought continuous wars against enemies from both the north and the south, immediately right after they gained independence from China in 939 CE. In a sense, theirs has been an unending struggle to secure sovereignty over their land.
When discussing the idea that the Vietnamese descend from mixed migrant groups originating in southern China, it must first be emphasized that many of these groups were refugees escaping northern turmoil, most notably the tens of thousands of Ming loyalists who fled southward by sea after the Manchu conquest of China and the establishment of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). Added to this were impoverished rural populations long marginalized in remote regions who gravitated toward the imperial centers. What is striking is that all these groups contributed to Vietnam’s migratory tapestry. This is reflected in the widespread presence of Chinese surnames within the Kinh majority today.
In the twenty‑first century, Vietnam continues to receive immigrants from its northern border with China, including economically disadvantaged laborers and so‑called technical workers, many of whom, critics argue, form a Chinese fifth column after overstaying their visas. Regardless of origin, many Chinese emigrants from inland provinces along the northern frontier have, over time, come to identify as Vietnamese. Since the 1990s, over one million new immigrants from mainland China have settled permanently in Vietnam, often through marriage into Vietnamese families, a trend well documented at annual gatherings of Chinese expatriates.
The formation of the Kinh majority was shaped not only by immigration but also by domestic emigration. Hanoi, much like Saigon, underwent significant demographic shifts as its original residents relocated – some moving south during the great migration of 1953-54, others departing overseas after the Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975. As middle‑class urban dwellers left in search of opportunities abroad, their absence was gradually filled by incoming villagers, who arrived as new migrant laborers to occupy the growing vacancies in the city.
Taken together, these demographic shifts reveal that modern Vietnamese identity, and the Vietnamese language, cannot be traced solely to Mon‑Khmer origins. Instead, contemporary Vietnam reflects a complex mosaic of ancestry. Its citizens are primarily of mixed Chinese descent, tracing back to the ancestral Yue of Zhou Dynasty’s vassal states and the Yue‑influenced Han of the Chu region more than 2,100 years ago. They also carry genetic contributions from native Mon, Chamic, and Khmer populations from the twelfth century onward, along with more recent admixtures, such as Euro‑Asian children born to American servicemen during the Vietnam War (1965-1975), which added over 50,000 individuals to South Vietnam’s population of 20 million by 1975. This extensive intermingling underscores the profound racial mixing that defines Vietnam.
Linguistically, Austroasiatic theorists have pointed to Mon‑Khmer basic words in Vietnamese as evidence for their theory. However, their numerical presence in the range from 1 to 5 does not align with Vietnamese counting from six to ten, and they bear no genetic relationship to the core vocabulary. Like any living language, Vietnamese has absorbed a wide range of loanwords over time, including those from Daic, Thai, and Malay, as well as English and French, alongside contributions from the Austroasiatic family.
Statistically, the rate of foreign lexical infiltration in Vietnamese remains modest. Even the decade of active American presence during the Vietnam War failed to significantly reshape the language, leaving only a small set of persistent English terms such as hello, okay, bye‑bye, number‑one, one‑two‑three, snack‑bar, cowboy, (bus)boy, hippy, and jeep, in stark contrast to the enduring Sinitic influence.
The situation became somewhat farcical when certain French institutions sponsored Vietnamese scholars to publish works on French influence in Vietnamese, including one that argued for a French origin of select Sinitic-Vietnamese words, which was strongly rebutted by Cao Xuân‑Hạo, (2001). Had the French colonial presence in Annam lasted longer, it is conceivable that roughly 400 French loanwords might have entered mainstream usage. As a matter of fact, by proportion, French loanwords, remnants of the 96‑year colonial legacy ending on July 20, 1954, number several hundred in Vietnamese. Common terms in some Vietnamese circles, such as moi (I), toi (you), monsieur (mister), madame (madam), and various modern grammatical constructions, in low frequency of usage, do not reflect a deep‑rooted etymological bond.
This stands in contrast to entrenched Chinese pronunciations in Vietnamese, such as anh (兄 xiōng, SV huynh, ‘brother’), em (俺 ǎn, SV am, ‘younger sibling’), chị (姊 zǐ, SV tỷ, ‘sister’), cô (故 gū, SV cô, ‘miss’), and mẹ (母 mǔ, SV mẫu, ‘mother’), including the many modern Chinese loans that remain popular today, such as bảotrọng (保重 bǎozhòng, ‘take care’), đảmbảo (擔保 dànbǎo, ‘guarantee’), thịphạm (示范 shìfàn, ‘demonstrate’), đạocụ (道具 dàojù, ‘prop set’), and giaođãi (交待 jiāodài, ‘to brief’).
II) Yue Ancestry and the Vietnamese identity
Anthropologically, in addressing the origin of Vietnamese etymology, the author advances an independent argument grounded in data analysis to counter the claims put forth by the Austroasiatic linguistic camp, which he regards as having introduced a distracting agenda into the debate. Advocates of this camp approach the issue from a southern geospheric perspective, focusing on regions where the Austroasiatic boundary intersects with the Austronesian substratum, particularly among Chamic populations in the Indo‑Chinese peninsula, and extending across the archipelagos of Malaysia and Indonesia, the western islands of the Philippines, and Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa.
Why did Austroasiatic theorists group the Vietnamese language into the Mon‑Khmer branch in the first place? The hypothesis took root largely because Mon‑Khmer populations dominated the Indo‑Chinese peninsula and permeated deeply into local demographics— roughly one-third of the population of the recently-annexed western provinces of the southernmost part of the country consisted of Khmer descendants. Additionally, this hypothesis especially emerged during the “gold rush” era of historical linguistics in the late nineteenth century, when Western linguists were yet to hear of the Yue people and their linguistic legacy. By contrast, Mon‑Khmer speakers in Southeast Asia resonated with the grandeur of the ancient Khmer Empire, a past that captured admiration and envy. This led to the creation of the Viet‑Muong subdivision within the Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer subfamily as scholars sought connections among these groups. However, up until now, it is still doubtful if the kings of the old Khmer Kingdom were really today’s Cambodian forefathers.
In response, the author firmly establishes the theory that the Vietnamese people descend primarily from ancient Yue ancestry in southern China, having intermixed with Han settlers during the millennium of Chinese domination following 111 B.C. As the Annamese polity expanded southward into what is now central Vietnam, further admixture occurred with Austronesian Chamic and Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer populations. Consequently, the modern Vietnamese population reflects a racially composite lineage shaped by centuries of migration, integration, and cultural synthesis.
This position stands as the author’s anti‑thesis to the Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer theorists, who argued that the Sinicization of indigenous Mon‑Khmer people in ancient Annam was the true process that produced Vietnamese identity. That viewpoint largely ignored the recorded history of the Yue, considered ancestors of early Annamese populations, who had advanced further south and bridged the anthropological gap leading to modern Vietnamese fusion. According to the theorists of Austroasiatic camp, the intermingling of Mon‑Khmer groups with Chinese resettlers during the colonial period was the origin of the Vietnamese. They claimed that Mon‑Khmer peoples from the Indo‑Chinese peninsula were the direct ancestors of modern Vietnamese. Crucially, the ‘Vietnamization of the Mon‑Khmer’ factors seemed overlooked the timeframe of when Mon‑Khmer groups purportedly arrived in the Red River Basin from the Lower Lao’s the southwestern region, the area had been already inhabited by Daic populations, remains vague (Nguyễn Ngọc Sơn. Ibid. 1993.)
Archaeological findings in central Vietnam further affirm that the inhabitants prior to these migrations bore no ancestral connection to the Vietnamese. Historically, early Vietnamese emigrants ventured further down the southern Indo‑Chinese peninsula only after the twelfth century, where they first mixed with the Chamic people whose forefathers were supposed from Hainan Island where today’s Li ethnic group reside. This mixing was facilitated by the concession of two Chamic Ô and Li Prefectures to the Trần Dynasty through royal interracial marriage between the King Chế Mân of Champa (Jaya Sinhavarman III) and the Vietnamese princess Huyềntrân Côngchúa (1287-1340). That is how late Vietnamese communities appear along the central coastline and southwestern regions.
Intriguingly, the Austroasiatic hypothesis aligned neatly with domains historically attributed to the Yue in ancient Chinese annals, a coincidence that blurred distinctions between Yue and Austroasiatic entities. Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer theorists discreetly adopted this notion while sidestepping the complexities of Sinitic‑Vietnamese linguistics, though. It was simpler to identify a set of basic words shared by Mon‑Khmer and Vietnamese and then draw conclusions about shared roots, rather than confronting more intricate etymological challenges.
For many Western‑educated scholars, it proved formidable to investigate deeply into ancient Chinese classics to uncover the etymological roots of Vietnamese. While their expertise often excelled in proto‑Chinese, Old Chinese, and Middle Chinese phonology since 19th century, this approach fell short in the case of Vietnamese, both historically and in contemporary studies.
It was not until the early twentieth century that sinology became an established discipline, and even then, few scholars could confidently substantiate the connection between it and Vietnamese’s Yue genealogy. Renowned linguists such as De Lacouperie, Maspero, Haudricourt, Shafer, Forrest, and Karlgren were among the select few whose work pointed to sinology as a vital key for understanding Vietnamese etymology. Without deep knowledge of Chinese language and history, no one could reliably offer a comprehensive view of Vietnamese linguistic origin.
Despite these competing frameworks, the broader picture can be synthesized by integrating the perspectives of Yue and Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer into one concept, the Bod (Terrien De Lacouperie, 1887). It is conceivable that Indo‑European theorists deliberately substituted the term Yue with Austroasiatic in order to reframe aboriginal Yue entities along a continuum that aligned with established historical linguistic models. This interpretive shift, whether intentional or methodological, echoes earlier typological depictions found in the works of T. D. Lacouperie (1887) and R. A. D. Forrest (1948).
Geographically, by substituting the terminology Austroasiatic with the Yue (i.e., Bod or BáchViệt), the author traces the movements of early indigenous Yue emigrants – LuoYue (雒越), OuYue (歐越 or Xi’Ou 西甌), and MinYue (閩越 or Dong’Ou 東甌), as well as racially mixed groups like the Qin‑modified Shu (巴蜀 BaShǔ, BaThục), Yue‑modified Chu (楚 Chǔ, Sở), Yue‑modified Han (漢), Hakka (客家 Kèjiā, Cácchú), Hokkien, Hainanese, Cantonese – from China South to northern Vietnam and across Southeast Asia. These groups advanced southward, resettled, and intermingled with native inhabitants along their journey, and in the case of Vietnam, fused with Chamic and Mon‑Khmer peoples.
In a sense, this process is encapsulated in the official name Việtnam, first appearing in 1802. This designation can also be read as a reverse form of NamViệt, meaning ‘the Việt of the South’, often misinterpreted as ‘to surpass in the south’ or ‘advance southward’. Such connotations highlight the migratory pattern of the ancestral Yue, whose emigration from China South became more pronounced around 300 B.C. in response to Qin expansion (Lu Shih Peng, 1964).
Figure 1 – Map of the historical ancient proto-Chinese migratory routes
Source: Thebeijingnews.com
III) Southward migration and Yue ethnogenesis
The author’s perspective on the southward geo‑spherical migration of the Yue, originating from a northern axis and radiating toward the southern hemisphere, can be expanded without invoking competing theories regarding Austronesian origins. Austronesian dispersal spans the eastern hemisphere over a timeline of 3,000 to 4,000 years, as supported by historical records. (1) This framework aligns with archaeological evidence indicating that the Yue were not the exclusive creators of bronze drums. Such artifacts have also been unearthed in the Shu State (蜀國) of Sichuan and across parts of Indonesia. In these regions, Austronesian interpretations have informed alternative hypotheses, including the Austro‑Thai theory. Fundamentally, all southern migratory trajectories appear to originate from northern sources.
Practically speaking, the Austroasiatic hypothesis overlooks alternative perspectives on proto‑Yue presence, which extended as far northeast as the Yangtze River and up to the Yellow River Basin. For example, proto‑Yue groups were present in the ancient Lu State (魯國) within Shandong Province (山東), as suggested by the broader ethnological framework of the Taic‑Yue stock originating from the Chu State (楚國) near present‑day Hubei (湖北) and Anhui (安徽). Vietnamese legends also recount that their earliest ancestors emerged from the Dongtinghu Lake area (洞庭湖) in Hunan Province (湖南), south of Hubei. Together, these regions form a contiguous zone representing the racial principality of the Taic stock.
The author’s frameworks for both Yue and Austroasiatic theories are synchronized with ancient Chinese legends and history. Tribes of the Taic‑Yue spread eastward and westward, contributing to the racial composition of the pre‑Qin (先秦) era. Evidence includes early human fossils discovered in ancient Sichuan, where the Bashu State (巴蜀) was once located. These tribes collectively introduced new cultural elements to the pre‑Han (前漢) populace, with differences marked by evolving names. Notably, the first monarch of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang, along with his generals and followers, were originally subjects of Chu (楚). Had the last Duke of Chu, Xiang Yu (項羽), defeated Liu Bang in the decisive battle, the dynasty might well have been named Chu rather than Han.
After the Han forces defeated Chu, subjects within the Han Empire’s periphery gradually came to identify as Han people (漢人 Hànrén), a process that took considerable time. This marked the emergence of the Chinese Han from a racially mixed population composed of pre‑Han peoples and Taic‑Yue descendants. These included groups from six ancient states conquered and unified under Qin rule in 221 B.C. The racial composition of Chu subjects primarily consisted of Taic‑Yue descendants, who in turn gave rise to the Southern Yue tribes (百越 BǎiYuè, HV BáchViệt, or ‘Bod’) through historical stages spanning the Zhou, Qin, and Han periods. (2)
In essence, Vietnamese ethnogenesis reflects a layered process: rooted in ancient Yue ancestry from southern China, subsequently intermixed with Han settlers during a millennium of Chinese rule beginning in 111 B.C. As the Annamese advanced into central and southern Vietnam, further admixture occurred with Austronesian Chamic and Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer populations. The result is a modern Vietnamese demographic profile shaped by centuries of migration, integration, and cultural synthesis.
The demographic evolution of ancient Annamese populations initially paralleled that of other Southern Yue‑descended groups, including the Cantonese (粵), Fukienese (閩越, ‘Hokkien’), and WuYue (吳越, e.g., Shanghainese). Yet this resemblance proved short‑lived. The Vietnamese trajectory diverged under prolonged Chinese domination, spanning from 235 B.C. to 939 A.D., punctuated only by brief episodes of autonomy. Following the twelfth century, the emergent Annamese polity began a sustained southward expansion beyond the 16th parallel, gradually consolidating its territorial reach over the next 1,080 years. This arc culminated in 1989, when Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia after her occupation of the country (formerly Kampuchea) and restored its pre‑1979 borders.
Map of the Austroasiatic languages per the Austroasiatic view
Source: Multiple sources on the internet
Figure 2 – The distribution of indigenous languages before the Vietnamese
The nature of a people's mother tongue, as commonly perceived, often reflects their racial composition, and vice versa. The Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer hypothesis for Vietnamese appears to align with this notion. A playful way to frame this theory is to liken the Vietnamese language to the product of a "forced marriage" between Mon-Khmer and Chinese influences. From an anthropological standpoint, the prolonged colonization of early Annamese populations might reflect a dynamic of role reversals: the "guests" (early Kinh settlers) ultimately became the new sovereign majority, while the indigenous natives assumed subordinate roles in their own land, newly annexed into a foreign state.
As life unfolded in the resettled homeland, now separated from mainland China, we can imagine a simple “what‑if” analogy. Picture a family moving into a house previously occupied by others. While settling in, they uncover cultural artifacts buried on the property. The new homeowner could easily claim these objects as his own, but it would be dishonest to present them as ancestral heirlooms passed down through his lineage.
Likewise, in cultural terms, descendants cannot simply adopt new surnames as if they were inherited traditions—whether Phạm or Trần in cases of Chamic ancestry, or Chế and Thạch among Khmer lineages that historically did not transmit family names. This analogy illustrates that Vietnamese identity did not emerge from casually absorbing Chinese surnames for the sake of having them; rather, these names became rooted in deeper cultural and historical processes.
Linguistically, a nation's language does not always reflect the tongue spoken by its ancestors. Analogous phenomena exist worldwide: for instance, modern French is distinct from the Gaulish language of ancient France, and people in former French colonies like Morocco or Haiti continue to speak French, albeit with distinctive local accents.
For the Austroasiatic view, rooted in the heritability of language based on racial identity, to hold water, Vietnamese speakers would need to be "racially pure" Mon-Khmer, or at least comparable to the Muong linguistic stock. However, this does not seem to align with the evidence, just as Cantonese and Fukienese remain grouped within Chinese dialectology despite their divergence. To enforce such a standard would risk undermining broader notions of national identity, particularly for larger nations such as China.
It is also worth recalling that modern Vietnamese as a fully formed language did not emerge until after Vietnam gained independence from China in the 10th century
IV) Contact, cognates, and competing frameworks
Etymologically, the commonalities in certain basic words can be explained as the result of linguistic contact. Vocabulary from one Mon‑Khmer language spilled into Mường subdialects, which in turn influenced Vietnamese speech. This was facilitated by geographical proximity, particularly in mountainous regions further south, where aboriginal populations retreated in the face of Chinese occupation and Sinicization. Even though mutual intelligibility between Việt‑Mường and Mường waned long after their split, Mường speakers have remained anthropologically and culturally connected to the Kinh as neighboring kin.
Additionally, shared basic words spread between Vietnamese and Mon‑Khmer languages through everyday activities: trade, bartering, agricultural exchanges, handicraft production, and shared farming practices. In other words, while the Kinh collaborated with Chinese occupiers, they also maintained ties with other diasporas within their territory. This interaction bridged linguistic gaps between Vietnamese and Mon‑Khmer. Such encounters trace back to prehistoric times, as previously mentioned, beginning with the first wave of Mon‑Khmer speakers moving into the Red River Delta from southwestern Lower Laos (Nguyễn Ngọc‑San 1993: 43).
Methodologically, Austroasiatic linguists grouped related basic etyma spanning many Mon‑Khmer languages into a broad spectrum of mixed elements. Austroasiatic theorists appear to have grouped these elements under the Mon‑Khmer umbrella without addressing their potential origin elsewhere, while the pervasive influence of Khmer often served as an unchallenged foundation for their claims. In fact, some of their cited Mon‑Khmer basic words in Vietnamese have found their cognates in Chinese and Sino‑Tibetan languages, their etyma here referred to as Sinitic‑Vietnamese. At the same time, many fundamental etymons in Vietnamese reveal roots in Yue‑related languages such as Cantonese, Teochew, Hainanese, and Fukienese, which further complicates the Austroasiatic hypothesis.
While it may be simpler to accept that ancient Annamese developed from a Yue foundation layered upon a Taic base, the claim that certain basic lexicons in Việt‑Mường subdialects could be loanwords from neighboring Mon‑Khmer languages aligns with the understanding that these languages formed part of a broader family spanning southern China centuries ago. Such dynamic is further complicated by the vast number of Sino‑Tibetan cognates in Sinitic‑Vietnamese, the unique linguistic features shared between Vietnamese and Chinese become apparent. The Austroasiatic theory, as its Mon‑Khmer subfamily as focal point, also fixates in dismissing altogether the older Sino‑Tibetan theory and posits an alternative root for Vietnamese in this case. The issue of linguistic affiliation thus involves not only Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer versus Yue, but also evolves into issue of Sinitic‑Vietnamese versus Sino‑Tibetan frameworks.
In any case, whether or not Vietnamese belongs to the Sino‑Tibetan family, Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer theorists remain focused on genetic classification, proposing that Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer is the mother language that gave rise to Vietnamese. Meanwhile, the Sino‑Tibetan camp highlights the Sinitic affinity of Vietnamese, tracing its historical foundations back approximately 3,000 years, a timeline notably absent in the prehistoric Austroasiatic Mon‑Khmer framework.
Regarding the timeframe in historical linguistics and their affiliations, Merritt Ruhlen, in The Origin of Language (1994 [1944]), quotes Hans Henrich Hock:
“We can never prove that two given languages are not related. It is always conceivable that they are in fact related, but that the relationship is of such an ancient date that millennia of divergent linguistic changes have completely obscured the original relationship.
Ultimately, this issue is tied up with the question of whether there was a single or a multiple origin of Language (writ large). And this question can be answered only in terms of unverifiable speculations, given the fact that even the added time depth provided by reconstruction, our knowledge of the history of human languages does not extend beyond ca. 5,000 B.C, a small ‘slice’ indeed out of the long prehistory of language.” (Hock 1986:566).
Conclusion
The long debate over Vietnam’s ethnolinguistic origins reveals that no single framework, whether Austroasiatic or Sino‑Tibetan, can fully account for the complexity of its ancestry. The Austroasiatic school rightly emphasizes the presence of Mon‑Khmer substratal vocabulary, but it underestimates the depth of Yue inheritance and the overwhelming Sinitic overlay that defines the modern lexicon. Conversely, the Sino‑Tibetan perspective highlights the dominance of Sinitic‑Vietnamese elements, yet risks obscuring the indigenous contributions of Chamic, Khmer, and earlier Taic populations.
What emerges instead is a composite picture: Vietnamese identity is the product of successive waves of migration, assimilation, and cultural layering. The Kinh majority descends largely from Sinicized Yue emigrants who intermingled with local populations in the Red River Delta, while later centuries brought the population of Chamic, Khmer, and Teochew into the fold. Archaeological evidence confirms that these groups contributed artifacts and lexicon, but the structural backbone of Vietnamese remained Yue‑derived and Sinitic‑integrated.
Culturally, Vietnam absorbed and reinterpreted traditions from its neighbors, such as the duodenary zodiac cycle to ritual festivals, while maintaining a distinct national spirit forged in resistance to repeated Chinese incursions. The contrast between Chinese identity, defined as cultural rather than racial – and Vietnamese identity – defined by resilience, sovereignty, and the preservation of ancestral memory, underscores the divergent paths taken after the fall of NamViệt and the independence of Annam in 939 CE.
Thus, Vietnamese must be understood as a language and a people of dual heritage: Yue substratum and Sinitic overlay, enriched by Austroasiatic and Austronesian contact, and consolidated through centuries of political struggle influenced by strong nationalism. This layered ancestry explains both the shared features with Cantonese and other southern lects, and the unique divergences that mark Vietnamese as a distinct entity. In the end, Vietnam’s national identity rests not on purity of origin but on the creative synthesis of multiple traditions, sustained by a collective will to preserve cultural integrity across millennia.
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FOOTNOTES
(1)^ Western theories often overlook historical Yue linguistic and cultural facts, favoring new constructs over existing knowledge. Many Western scholars have hesitated to engage deeply with older historical sources, particularly those requiring proficiency in Chinese, leading them to invent frameworks from scratch rather than building on established research.
(2)^ “Bod” is just another name “Bak”as in 百姓 Baixing, 百越 BáchViệt or BaiYue as discussed by Lacouperie (Ibid., see The Underlying Stratum of Basic Vocabularies) that “Bak was an ethnic and nothing else. We may refer as a proof to the similar name, rendered however by different symbols, which they gave to several of their early capitals, PUK, POK, PAK, all names known to us after ages, and of which the similarity with Pak, Bak, cannot be denied. In the region from where they had come, Bak was a well-known ethnic, for instance, Bakh in Bakhdhi (Bactra), Bagistan, Bagdada, etc. etc., and is explained as meaning ‘fortunate, flourishing’. ” in addition to what was discussed by the same author quoted in The Languages of China before the Chinese, per Lacouperie (ibid, pp. 116-119), on the ancestral Bak of the early Chinese as opposed to the pre-Chinese.
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