Đinh Xuân Vịnh

1911–2015 ⚠︎ · scholar · 16th generation

Brother of Đinh Xuân Bính, son of Đinh Xuân Bạt. A graduate of the higher primary course under the French administration, he was a clerk-interpreter (thông phán) at the Residence of Vinh, and devoted himself to research and to the collection of sources. For more than half a century, he wrote by hand an encyclopaedia of Vietnam (40 notebooks, about 40,000 entries), which received an award from the Vietnam Folk Arts Association in 1994 and was put forward for the Hồ Chí Minh Prize. From it he drew the Sổ tay địa danh Việt Nam (NXB Lao động, 1996; 754 pages according to ĐTA 2023).

A date of death in 1976, sometimes given, is contradicted by the sources: he appears among the advisers of the 2000 Gia phả, and Nguyễn Khắc Thuần gives his dates as 1911–2015 ⚠︎.