A wave of Vietnamese Americans – more than half of whom share the same last name – are running for public office in Orange County, California, Fox News cited a Los Angeles Times report.
Out of 24 candidates who run for different offices, 13 have the same last name: Nguyen.
Little Saigon, an enclave in Orange County that comprises Garden Grove, Westminster, and Fountain Valley, is home to one of the largest concentrations of Vietnamese outside of Vietnam.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, a UC Riverside professor quoted by The Times, credited the rise in the Vietnamese’ political participation to their increasing “influence in central O.C. policies.”
She stated that this surge of Vietnamese Americans has its roots in the years after the Vietnam War, during which thousands of Vietnamese refugees resettled in California.
The Nguyen last name is the most common Vietnamese surname, and its origins are traced back to the dynasty that was heading Vietnam until the Communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh took control of the North in 1945. Today, as many as 40 percent of Vietnamese people have the surname Nguyen.
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