Ngũ Hành Sơn · Đà Nẵng · Việt Nam
The Đặng Văn Family of Non Nước
Five hundred years ago one man gave a family its name. Five hundred years later his descendants still greet one another the same way: “Đặng Tộc là anh em” — the Đặng are one family.
Founded by Đặng Văn Cẩn, born 1519 · 31 generations · 5,554 names recorded · ancestral house at Kiệt 420, Lê Văn Hiến
For relatives abroad
Who we are
If your family name is Đặng and your people came from Non Nước, at the foot of the Marble Mountains in Đà Nẵng, there is a good chance this is your family — and that your name, or your grandfather’s, is already written down here.
We are a Vietnamese lineage that has kept a written family register — a gia phả — since at least 1838. It records who was born to whom, generation after generation, from our founding ancestor down to the children born this year. Today it holds 5,554 names across 31 generations and 976 households, and it is still being corrected and extended.
This page exists because many of our descendants now live outside Vietnam and read English more comfortably than Vietnamese. What follows is a summary. The full archive — photographs, documents, ceremony records, essays on custom and ritual — is on the Vietnamese side of this site.
From Nghệ An to the Marble Mountains
The story in brief
- 1519
Đặng Văn Cẩn, our founding ancestor, is born on 20 October at Trung Lữ Vạn, in Lam Sơn commune, Đô Lương district — in what is today Nghệ An province, in north-central Vietnam.
- 1558
A naval officer under the Lê dynasty, holding the post of Tiền trận Sách hữu thị vệ, he travels south with Lord Nguyễn Hoàng, who has been sent to govern the frontier region of Thuận Hóa.
- 1571
He marches into Quảng Nam with the force commanded by Mai Đình Dõng — and afterwards stays. He settles at Non Nước, below the Marble Mountains, and makes his living on the water, on the Trường Giang (Cổ Cò), Cẩm Lệ and Hàn rivers, as his father had before him. For generations his descendants do the same, living by the river and by fishing.
- c. 1825
Under Emperor Minh Mạng, the Vạn Sơn Thuỷ map is drawn. It survives, and it shows the river community our family belonged to.
- 1838
The family register is written down. Every later entry — including yours, if you are in it — rests on this document.
- The war years
Mines, grenades and M79 fire bring down much of the old ancestral house at Hỏa Sơn mountain. Through all of it the building shelters local cadres, and the family keeps coming back to repair what is left.
- 1979
A second ancestral house is built at Khuê Mỹ. It is where the family council meets today.
- 30 August 2006
The old ancestral house is listed as a historical and cultural monument by the Đà Nẵng People’s Committee, under Decision No. 5879/QĐ-UBND.
- 2026
The rear hall — Nhà Hậu đường — is completed and dedicated in May. On 29–30 August the family marks twenty years since the heritage listing.
Where the family gathers
Two ancestral houses
The old house at Hỏa Sơn
Hòa Hải · listed 2006It stands on the slope of Dương Hỏa Sơn, one of the Marble Mountains, about 7 km south-east of central Đà Nẵng, facing west toward the Cổ Cò river.
Inside are a horizontal board of stone, a pair of parallel sentences carved in Hán–Nôm script, and two merit steles recording who gave what, and when.
The house at Khuê Mỹ
Built 1979 · in use todayThis is the working heart of the family now: where the council meets, where the annual ceremony is held, and where the rear hall was dedicated in 2026.
Kiệt 420, Lê Văn Hiến, Ngũ Hành Sơn Ward, Đà Nẵng.
“This great and sacred land nurtured the beginning of a civilisation that lasts ten thousand ages;
this ancestral house, strong in spirit, opens wide the blessings that grow from the root.”
The Hán–Nôm couplet in the old houseOne day each year
When we gather
The main ceremony of our year is the Lễ Chánh kỵ — the memorial for our founding ancestor and his wife. It falls on the 12th day of the sixth lunar month, which in most years lands in July.
Relatives come from across Vietnam and from overseas. The family council receives them; the Đặng lineage council of Vietnam and the overseas association take part. If you are thinking of coming home to Đà Nẵng, this is the day worth planning around — it is the one day of the year when the whole family is in the same courtyard.
You do not need to read Vietnamese
Finding your name
The register is searchable online. The interface is in Vietnamese, but you can use it without reading a word of it:
- Open the register and type a name into the search box. Accents are optional — typing
dang van canwill find Đặng Văn Cẩn. - Each result shows a name and a number labelled
đời. That is the generation, counting the founding ancestor as the first. - Open a name to see that person’s parents, spouse and children — then follow the links upward toward the ancestors, or downward toward the living.
- If you only know a grandparent’s or great-grandparent’s name, start there and work down. That is almost always the fastest way to place yourself.
A register is only as good as the people who check it
If you are overseas
You would not be the first to reach us from abroad. The family already has an overseas deputy head — Phó tộc Hải ngoại — and an overseas association that sends its greetings to the annual ceremony every year.
If you hold information the register is missing — a birth, a marriage, a death, a branch that left Vietnam and was never written back in — it is welcome. So are corrections. A name spelled wrong for forty years is still wrong, and only the family that carries it can say so.
Write to the family council at the ancestral house: Kiệt 420, Lê Văn Hiến, Ngũ Hành Sơn Ward, Đà Nẵng, Việt Nam.
A note on privacy: details of living members are deliberately limited on the public site. What you see here is what the family has agreed to publish.