Tonkin.
A surname transferred from the given name.
Meaning & usage
A surname transferred from the given name.
Where this word comes from
From a medieval diminutive form of the given name Thomas.
Synonym of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
A former domain in northern Vietnam.
A former protectorate in northern Vietnam, a colony of France.
Ellipsis of the Gulf of Tonkin: a gulf in northern Vietnam.
Ellipsis of Gulf of Tonkin incident, a 1964 event used to increase US involvement in the Vietnam War.
Where this word comes from
From French Tonkin, from Vietnamese Đông Kinh (“Hanoi; its former kingdom”), from đông (“east, eastern”) + kinh (“capital”), from Middle Chinese 東京 (tuwng kjaeng), q.v. Cognate, through Middle Chinese, of Tokyo.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.