Where I Am Really From: Or, Sometimes I Think About the Etymology of ‘Gook’

By Guest Contributor

In the Vietnamese language, most words have only one syllable. Thus, although English-language speakers usually refer to the country using the multi-syllabic variant “Vietnam,” actual Vietnamese people refer to it as “Việt Nam,” a two-part compound that roughly translates to “Southern folk.” As a matter of personal preference, I configure it as “Viet Na…