Thank you for your kind words! ('Corruption' is a prose poem, actually -- a classification which might provoke an entry of its own from you, if it hasn't already)

Local varieties of English take their own direction (bifurcate). I remember reading something quite trashy from Nigerian English making it seem that "futile" there is a common word meaning "impotent / sterile", which in turn seemed to be an obsessive topic for many. (Perhaps a "futile / fertile" pair?)

In Flann O'Brien's books ordinary people constantly use "class" where I would use "kind" or "sort". I wondered whether it was some kind of vestige of Catholic theology from their education system. (or "some class of vestige of Catholic theology").

I allways wonder why western media are using last syllabe as family name when come to vietnamese name? is it something to do with french convention? but why english media follow suit? and in the same vain, ho chi min shoule be called min in the article but i've never seen such use, why?

The given name (which comes last in Vietnamese) is used as the reference name ("Mr. Thieu") because there are so few family names, so referring to "Mr. Nguyen" would be too confusing. As far as I know, Ho Chi Minh is the only Vietnamese routinely referred to by his family name, and I'm not sure why that is. I have a biography of him somewhere, so if I dig it up maybe I can find the answer.

language hat is right in that the given name is last and is the only one used by itself by Vietnamese.

The whole order is

family-name optional-connector given-name

So Nguyen Thu Oanh can be referred to as Nguyen Thu Oanh or Oanh. Titles likewise can go with the whole name or given name alone (but not with just the family name).

Traditionally however, for kings the reverse was true and they were known by their family names. By analogy, given his historical/political importance, Ho Chi Minh has been granted the same kind of status and can be referred to with Ho. The most common way of referring to him in written Vietnamese seems to be Bac Ho (Uncle Ho), often abbreviated to Bac.

Aha! Thanks, I should have known my commenters would save me the trouble of looking it up.