ngụy and quisling: etymology as world history

There's more than one interesting back-story to the etymology of ngụy and quisling, two words which I saw as translations for each other in the placards placed below museum exhibitions on the Vietnamese/American war in the Da Lat museum. Vidkun Quisling was the Norwegian fascist who took control of the Norwegian government in a 1940 coup d'etat and collaborated closely with the Nazi German regime. His last name is now a common noun: a quisling refers to any collaborator with an enemy during an occupation. A government that collaborates with the enemy is not quite the same thing as a "puppet state" -- a government directly set up by the enemy -- but the meanings are nevertheless quite close. Thus, for the Vietnamese government, the Americans were the enemy, and Ngo Dinh Diem was a quisling. This means that the museum's use of the word quisling to refer to the ARVN must have been fully intentional and correct (at first I thought it was an accident or a mistranslation) in accordance with their political interpretation of that government. 

As for the word ngụy, the story goes back all the way to around 200 B.C., to the Wei state of China (current-day Central/Eastern China). The Vietnamese word ngụy descends from the Chinese word for this state (in Pinyin, Wei, or 魏, which in old Chinese phonology was pronounced closer to Nquj -- much closer to the Vietnamese!). The Wei state was conquered in 225 B.C. by the Qin state during the Qin wars of unification -- the first time historical China was united under one rule, forever changing its history as a nation state. I need some help reading the Vietnamese article that explains the word ngụy, but it appears to be the case that the Qin empire regarded Wei as a false and illegitimate state -- a "puppet state" -- and thus the name of the state itself became synonymous with an illegitimate government. The word ngụy appears to also have a general meaning of pseudo- or camouflage in other contexts. The word ngụy in post-1975 Vietnam appears to be a very important word that is applied to governments ranging from the Nguyễn Dynasty to French Indochina to the American war period. 

I really like these words because they show you the power of language to take you back across time and understand the world as it was seen by others. To some extent, each word we use is a link to a history that is waiting to be retrieved.

Learning about war history with students in Da Lat while camping: Fun, Adventure, and Education!