User:Donald Trung/State of Vietnam coat of arms research

This page serves as both a draft page and research page related to the coat of arms used by the State of Việt Nam.

Talk page discussion

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MobileDiff/1010877527&action=historysubmit&type=revision  Published. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:40, 7 March 2021 (UTC) .

 Both are (likely) correct, I would like to present the argument that both coat of arms are most likely correct, this is because laws which dictate heraldic symbols allow for different interpretations by different artists and authors and will allow for different depictions to occur. Let's look at what the English-language Wikipedia article "Great Seal of the United States" says:

"The 1782 resolution of Congress adopting the arms, still in force, legally blazoned the shield as:

Paleways of 13 pieces, argent and gules; a chief, azure.

As the designers recognized,{{citation needed|date=May 2019}} this is a technically incorrect blazon under traditional English heraldic rules, since in English practice a vertically striped shield would be described as "paly", not "paleways", and it would not have had an odd number of stripes. A more technically proper blazon would have been argent, six pallets gules ... (six red stripes on a white field), but the phrase used was chosen to preserve the reference to the 13 original states.{{citation needed|date=May 2019}}"

Now, this law comes from the 1780's and essentially afterwards the government of the United States of America exclusively uses seals, all State and County governments use seals, American universities use seals, Etc. Plus the armourial itself completely breaks English tradition and is considered to be "a bad coat of arms" because of it. In fact Americans basically only think of coat of arms or see them when they attend Renaissance fairs or look at Hollywood movies or documentaries about Medieval Europe. And they likely will only see their coat of arms on their passports, in fact, even Wikipedia didn't list the United States coat of arms on the article about the country for over a decade. So passports aren't always right.

Now if we look at Dutch passports from the 21st (twenty-first) century we will see this:

• 
  "Azure, billetty Or a lion with a coronet Or armed and langued Gules holding in his dexter paw a sword Argent hilted Or and in the sinister paw seven arrows Argent pointed and bound together Or. (The seven arrows stand for the seven provinces of the Union of Utrecht.) The shield is crowned with the (Dutch) royal crown and supported by two lions Or armed and langued gules. They stand on a scroll Azure with the text (Or) "Je Maintiendrai" (pronounced [ʒə mɛ̃tjɛ̃dʁɛ], French for "I shall maintain".)".
• 
  "Azure, billetty Or a lion with a coronet Or armed and langued Gules holding in his dexter paw a sword Argent hilted Or and in the sinister paw seven arrows Argent pointed and bound together Or. (The seven arrows stand for the seven provinces of the Union of Utrecht.) The shield is crowned with the (Dutch) royal crown and supported by two lions Or armed and langued gules. They stand on a scroll Azure with the text (Or) "Je Maintiendrai" (pronounced [ʒə mɛ̃tjɛ̃dʁɛ], French for "I shall maintain".)".

The law on the coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands specifically states: "Azure, billetty Or a lion with a coronet Or armed and langued Gules holding in his dexter paw a sword Argent hilted Or and in the sinister paw seven arrows Argent pointed and bound together Or. (The seven arrows stand for the seven provinces of the Union of Utrecht.) The shield is crowned with the (Dutch) royal crown and supported by two lions Or armed and langued gules. They stand on a scroll Azure with the text (Or) "Je Maintiendrai" (pronounced [ʒə mɛ̃tjɛ̃dʁɛ], French for "I shall maintain".)". As you can see above, the produced coat of arms are radically different, but both fully fit the description. Comparison this interpretation of the Flemish lion with the coat of arms of the French department of Nord clearly shows that interpreting the same historical heraldic symbol (the coat of arms of the County of Flanders) produces radically different results.

Looking at Vietnamese heraldry this is a bit more complicated, as Vietnamese heraldry is based on Chinese heraldry which developed independently from European heraldry and European (French) influence. The website "www.hubert-herald.nl" specifically states that the coat of arms of the State of Vietnam looks like: "After the Geneva Accords a coat of arms appeared. It showed the pale and pallets of the flag, arranged vertically and charged with a blue dragon passant.".

Now this is open to interpretation, as Goran tek-en replaced the Qing Dynasty dragon with a Vietnamese dragon this can be seen as different interpretations of the same text. The dragon on the passport looks only slightly closer to the Qing Dynasty flag dragon, but both are equally valid as "Chinese/Vietnamese dragons".

Looking at different uploads here:

• 
  "After the Geneva Accords a coat of arms appeared. It showed the pale and pallets of the flag, arranged vertically and charged with a blue dragon passant.". - Wikipedia's 2008 interpretation (with later modifications).
• 
  "After the Geneva Accords a coat of arms appeared. It showed the pale and pallets of the flag, arranged vertically and charged with a blue dragon passant.". - www.hubert-herald.nl.
• 
  "After the Geneva Accords a coat of arms appeared. It showed the pale and pallets of the flag, arranged vertically and charged with a blue dragon passant.". - Passport.
• 
  "After the Geneva Accords a coat of arms appeared. It showed the pale and pallets of the flag, arranged vertically and charged with a blue dragon passant.". - Goran tek-men's interpretation of the passport image.

And then comparing it to later examples from the First Vietnamese Republic and Second Vietnamese Republic:

• 
  The official coat of arms of the Ngô regime (First Vietnamese Republic).
• 
  The passport blazon of the First and Second Vietnamese Republics.

It is quite clear that the shield used on the passports of South Vietnam was radically different from the official emblem of the first Republic. Yet the blazon used during the Second Vietnamese Republic is identical to the one that was used earlier on this article as well.

Regarding the State of Vietnam coat of arms I found this quote: "Thiết kế quốc huy mô phỏng lá cờ vàng ba sọc đỏ trên mặt khiên, con rồng xanh là biểu tượng của hoàng thất Nguyễn và cũng thể hiện Quốc gia Việt Nam là một nước quân chủ." This explains that the dragon is used to symbolise the Nguyễn Dynasty, the State of Vietnam in a way was meant to be a continuation of the Nguyễn Dynasty, so it would be logical to think that the dragon would be in the same style as was typically used by the earlier Nguyễn regime. Typically we can tell how official government state emblems look(ed) through money, unfortunately the coat of arms never appeared on any coins or banknotes, if looking at earlier silver coins issued by the Nguyễn Dynasty then the Chinese dragon is still very much open to interpretation.

Personally, I don't think that the earlier interpretation is wrong, but the only contemporary evidence of the coat of arms I could find is on the passport. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:38, 7 March 2021 (UTC) .

Examples of Vietnamese heraldry

To import to Wikimedia Commons

"Source" field.

• Armorial of South Vietnam, www.hubert-herald.nl (Source image 1 / Source image 2 / Source image 3 / Source image 4 / Source image 5 / Source image 6).

"After the Geneva Accords a coat of arms appeared. It showed the pale and pallets of the flag, arranged vertically and charged with a blue dragon passant." (clearly) derived from the Wikimedia Commons image "File:Coat of Arms of South Vietnam (1954 - 1955).svg".

Source links. 🔗

• http://www.hubert-herald.nl/VietnamSouth_bestanden/image025.jpg

Other important links 🔗

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nederlanden_paspoort.jpg
  • https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Nederlanden_paspoort.jpg&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nederlanden_paspoort_2011.jpg
  • https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Nederlanden_paspoort_2011.jpg&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile