 You've seen this name before. It's a name that's so popular there's no way you haven't. Go look in your high school yearbook and I guarantee you'll find someone with this name assuming that your high school was even the least bit diverse. Maybe it's the name of one of your best friends named Kevin. Or maybe it was the name of your crush. Or maybe it's your name. And that name is... Naguyen? Nagayan? Let me see the script. How do you pronounce this? I don't know dude you wrote it. I know but I just copied this part off the internet. Nagayan? Alright just stop the recording. Just stop the recording. Okay I'm doing this voiceover about five hours later and I've finally learned how to pronounce this name. Ready? Write this down. Win. I'll say it again. Win. And there it is for the half of you watching this video just for the pronunciation. For the other half did you guys ever wonder why so many people have this last name? You guys remember the last video right? When we were talking about the Korean last names Kim, Lee and Park? Yeah the most popular last name Kim makes up about 20% of the Korean population. So just how popular is Win? Are we looking at 5%, 10%, 20%? Try double that. 40% of all Vietnamese people have the last name Win. During the Vietnam War these were the names of the leaders on both sides. Well at least we do catch a break with Ho Chi Minh who seems to be an exception. In Australia, a country with a significant Vietnamese population, Win ranks number seven on the list of most popular last names. Behind the names you would typically expect, Anglo names such as Smith, Jones and Williams. In Australia's two largest cities of Melbourne and Sydney alone, Win is the second and third most common name respectively. Out of the estimated 94 million or so Vietnamese around the world, around 38 million of them have the last name Win. So the real question is, how many people actually know how to pronounce it? Yeah and we're here to ask students one simple question. How the frick do you pronounce Win? How do you pronounce this word? Oh I saw a bit about that but I don't know. Nguyen? Nguyen. Nguyen? I have no idea. It looks Asian. It is an Asian name. You go first. Nguyen, I don't know. I don't know if anything comes natural. Is this your name? No. Okay. I'll be offended if you get a problem. Nguyen. Nguyen. Nguyen. Where is the name from? It's Vietnamese. Oh. Does it help? No. Nguyen? Nguyen? Nguyen? Nguyen? Something like that. Nguyen? Nguyen? Nguyen? That's why I'm gonna lock that in. Final answer? Final answer. All right. You lost it. Locking it in. You don't want to use the lifeline? No, no. All right. That's it. Um, Nguyen? Nguyen? Nguyen? Yeah. Is that your final answer? Nguyen. I think so. The same thing, Nguyen. Yeah, I don't know. My guess is Gaian. Gaian? Nguyen? What'd you say? Nguyen? How are you sure? Uh, dull. I'm Vietnamese. And now that we got that out of the way, how did this happen? Well, not surprisingly, to find that out, we need to take a trip through history. Vietnam and its people have been around for a long, long time. But they've been pretty much family nameless for most of its history. In fact, most countries around the world have been last nameless until recent years. Because the only people using family names were Europeans, like the Greeks, the Romans, the Normans, and, well, the Chinese. Even during ancient times, the Chinese have been known to have a very organized structure with a grand bureaucracy running from the bottom of the chain to the very top. The existence of last names standardized the naming system and helped this bureaucracy run smoothly, which made it easier for census taking, conscription, and collecting taxes. These last names would typically be derived from their occupation or social status, just like how the Anglo-Saxon name for Smith would be given to Smiths, as in they work at a blacksmith shop. And the name Miller would be for those who work at a windmill or a watermill. So when the Han dynasty of China occupied the land which would eventually be known as Vietnam in 111 BC, it's a tale as old as time. Military superpower takes over smaller country, then exploits it for all its worth, while also assimilating it with its own culture. And this is how family names were introduced to the Vietnamese people. Just so you know, this wasn't a thing that China gave the Vietnamese people because they just thought it was cool. What they really wanted was an easier way to keep track of them in order to tax them. So they basically started giving out last names to people. The people in this village will be named Pham. Everyone living in this town will be Li. Everyone living in this area will be Tram. And everyone living in this region will be Nguyen. So basically the lives of hundreds of millions of people today were forever influenced by some random Chinese tax collecting official. Of course, it was the Chinese who invented those names. The names they gave them were originally proper Chinese names, which were Vietnamized over time. It's thought that Nguyen was originally Zhuan. The Chinese word refers to a stringed instrument, this one to be precise. And now all of a sudden the name Johnny Guitar doesn't really sound that unusual. And though Vietnam gained its independence from China in 938, the whole concept of last names just stuck. So now that we know why Vietnamese people started getting last names, why did this name out of all the others become so popular? Well, back then in Vietnamese culture, last names just weren't really all that important. And this kind of holds true today as well. In those days, it wasn't unheard of or even uncommon for one to change their family name to one that would possibly gain favor from the ruling dynasty. It's no coincidence that one of the most well-known dynasties was the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled over Vietnam from 1802 to 1945. And you can bet that during that time, it became a pretty popular family name. Then in 1945, the last emperor of Vietnam, Bao Dai, chose to step down from the throne. And there hasn't been a monarchy in Vietnam ever since. And because there haven't been any ruling families since the Nguyen dynasty, that family will forever be known as the last Vietnamese dynasty. And because there's no longer a ruling family, there's not really a reason to change your family name any more these days. So there you have it, Nguyen stuck. And so that's the story of how approximately 40 million people are stuck with that name today.