Viet people
The Viet, or Kinh, are Vietnam’s largest ethnic group and the country’s majority population. Vietnamese is their traditional language.
Red River Delta: A low-lying region in northern Vietnam formed by sediment from the Red River and its distributaries. Its rice-growing communities became a core population center for Viet society.
Kinh people: The official name for Vietnam’s majority ethnic group, also commonly called the Viet. Kinh is the state-recognized ethnonym most often used for the group named here.
Champa: A network of Cham polities along central and southern Vietnam, flourishing from the early centuries CE to the nineteenth century. Viet southward expansion progressively absorbed lands once governed by Cham states.
Tết: Vietnamese Lunar New Year, the principal annual holiday marking the beginning of the lunar calendar year. Family reunions and ancestral observances make Tết a widely shared expression of Viet cultural life.
Dong Son culture: A Bronze Age culture of mainland Southeast Asia, known for elaborate bronze drums and settlements in northern Vietnam. Its archaeological record illuminates societies in the Viet ancestral region before written histories.
Vietnamese people: People who identify with Vietnam through citizenship, national culture, or ancestry, including many ethnic groups. Vietnamese nationality is broader than membership in the Viet ethnic majority.
Khmer Krom: A Khmer ethnic population concentrated in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, a region incorporated into Vietnamese rule over time. The delta’s incorporation placed Viet settlement alongside long-established Khmer communities.
Vietnamese ancestor worship: Ritual practices honoring deceased family members through offerings, household altars, and commemorative ceremonies. These practices connect family continuity with everyday religious life in many Viet communities.
Âu Lạc: An early state in northern Vietnam traditionally associated with the third century BCE and the kingdom of Âu Việt and Lạc Việt. Its remembered origins connect early northern Vietnamese polities with later Viet historical identity.
Austroasiatic languages: A language family spoken across mainland Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia, including Vietnamese. Vietnamese belongs to this family despite extensive later influence from Chinese.