Amazing but true: From the Bao Linh Tinh

25-year old man admits he doesn’t know his own father’s name

Nguyen Hoang Anh didn’t realise he had never known his own father’s name until questioned by his girlfriend’s parents, when visiting their house for the first time.
“At first I though my mind had gone blank,” said the 25-year old computer engineer. “You know, when a teacher asks you a question in front of the whole class and you just freeze, even though you know that you know the answer.”

But Hoang Anh didn’t know. A man he has called ‘bo’ (father) all his life, of course, has a name, but nobody ever told their son and he never heard anyone say it out loud.
“It’s normal, you just say ‘bo oi’ when you talk to him and then his friends come around and call him ‘anh’ (brother) or the woman with the electricity bill says, ‘Chu Nha’ (man of the house) or his older sister’s kids call him ‘cau’ (young uncle),” said Anh sheepishly. “It’s not as if he’s famous, he’s just a normal man leading a simple life. He’s ‘bo thoi’ in my house. Even my mother calls him that.”

His father, who is in actual fact named Nguyen Duc Manh, reportedly took umbrage not to the fact that his son didn’t know his name but that Anh knew his mother’s.

“I guess I just saw it on her ID card one day,” said Anh of the woman who is known as ‘me’ (mother) to him and his younger sister, Bich Ngoc. “But even that seems weird. She doesn’t come across as a woman who should be called Duyen. She’s a bit of a battleaxe.”

But Hoang Anh isn’t getting too worked up about it.
“It’s meaningless anyway, to cheer my father up I started calling him Hung aound the house and he didn’t even notice me," laughed Anh. "In fact, I think he might have forgotten his own name."


More on pronouns here in the Archives