Trung Quốc (Vietnamese)
Where does "Trung Quốc" come from?
The Vietnamese term 'Trung Quốc' is a Sino-Vietnamese word derived from the Chinese characters 中國, literally translating to 'center country.' It combines the roots for 'center' and 'country' to describe China, and it is a scholarly counterpart to the colloquial doublet 'Tung Của'.
Full etymology tree
- Trung Quốc (Vietnamese), 'Chinese'
- derived 中國 (Zhōngguó) (Chinese), 'China (a country in Asia; capital: Beijing)'
- compound 中 (zhōng) (Chinese), 'middle; center'
- compound 國 (guó) (Chinese), 'country; nation; nation-state; kingdom'
- derived 中國 (Zhōngguó) (Chinese), 'China (a country in Asia; capital: Beijing)'
Cognates and doublets
- Tung Của (Vietnamese)
Updated July 2026
Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris