sông Cửu Long

sông (“river”) + Cửu Long (九龍, “nine dragons”), literally “River of the Nine Dragons”, referring to the nine main distributaries of the Mekong in its lower reaches before it enters the sea.

Alternative theory holds that Cửu Long was essentially a disyllabified, Sino-Vietnamese phono-semantic matching of Proto-Vietic *k-roːŋ (“river”), whence Modern Vietnamese also sông.

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [səwŋ͡m˧˧ kiw˧˩ lawŋ͡m˧˧]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [ʂəwŋ͡m˧˧ kɨw˧˨ lawŋ͡m˧˧]
• (Hồ Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [ʂəwŋ͡m˧˧ kɨw˨˩˦ lawŋ͡m˧˧] ~ [səwŋ͡m˧˧ kɨw˨˩˦ lawŋ͡m˧˧]

sông Cửu Long

1. The collective name for the distributaries of the Mekong River in Vietnam's territory.