Names of Ho Chi Minh City
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The city now known as Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnamese: Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh ⓘ) has gone by several different names during its long history, reflecting settlements by different ethnic, cultural and political groups.
Originally known as Prey Nôkôr while being a part of the Khmer Empire, it came to be dubbed Sài Gòn (ⓘ) informally by Vietnamese settlers fleeing the Trịnh–Nguyễn War in the north. In time, control of the city and the area passed to the Vietnamese, who gave the city the name of Gia Định. This name remained until the time of French conquest in the 1860s, when the occupying force adopted the name Saïgon for the city, a westernized form of the traditional Vietnamese name.
The current name was given after the Fall of Saigon in 1975, and honors Hồ Chí Minh, the first leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. However, the informal name of Sài Gòn remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora and local Vietnamese.