Lac people

The Lac or Lạc people (Lakkien: người Lạc, Menghean: 駱族 / 락족 Ragjok) are an ethnic group in southwestern Menghe. They are the second-largest ethnic group in the country, after the majority Meng, and they are the largest of the country's southwestern ethnic groups.

Etymology

Records from the Meng dynasty refer to the early Lac as the Wŏl, or Wŏlsŏ, meaning "west of the Wŏl river." The term Lạc first appeared in the 2nd century CE, and unlike Wŏl, it was an endonym rather than an exonym. The precise etymology of the term remains unclear. The earliest written records use the Meng character 駱, which originally referred to a white horse with a black mane; the ancient tribes of the Chŏllo region were known for their horsemanship, even after they transitioned to sedentary agriculture. More recently, some linguists have argued that Lạc is derived from a word for canal or water, in reference to the irrigation systems which branched out from the Wŏl river; similar nouns today include lạch, "canal, ditch, waterway" and nước rạc, "ebbing tidal water." In this theory, the character 駱 is purely phonetic.

History

According to legend, the Lac are descended from an ancient clan that broke away from the Yellow Emperor's kingdom 5,000 years ago. They first settled on the Chŏllo plain, but they were driven out again by the Meng dynasty, retiring to the far side of the Wŏl river. Historians disagree on the extent to which this account reflects actual events; the Yellow Emperor is regarded by many as a mythical or at least mythically embellished figure, but Meng conquests onto the Chŏllo plain may have displaced the local semi-nomadic people westward.

During the 3rd century CE, the various Lac tribes united into the kingdom of Tống, which at its peak stretched from the Wŏl river into what is today Argentstan. During the centuries that followed, Tống resisted Meng efforts at conquest, rising in power during the Five States and Seven Kingdoms period and maintaining its independence during the Jin and Sŭng dynasties, albeit with some loss of territory in the latter. Even as the Lạc in this period resisted Menghean political control, they adopted many aspects of Meng culture, including the Chữ_Nôm alphabet.

In the 9th century, growing numbers of Taleyan and Khalistani merchants began arriving by sea, bringing with them a new religion: Shahidism. The new traders were initially confined to the coast, but their number and influence grew over time as the South Menghe Sea trading network flourished. In 1026, Taleyan merchants backed a Shahidist rebel movement and managed to seize power in the south, forming the Ayyubid Sultanate. During this period, Shahidism was established as a state religion, and the practice of traditional Lạc faiths was outlawed. By the middle of the 12th century, the vast majority of the population had been converted to Shahidism. Even after conversions, this period laid the groundwork of a persistent social order in which Ummayan-speaking Taleyan elites dominated the government while the Lac majority was relegated to a lower social status.

Lac lands were conquered by the Menghean Yi dynasty in the 14th century, bringing another wave of Meng cultural influence. By this time, however, Shahidism was firmly rooted into Lac culture, and traditional religions did not see much of a resurgence. Likewise, Taleyan traders continued to enjoy privileged status under the Yi, as trade with Meridia flourished. A short-lived Lac state emerged in the wake of the dynastic collapse following the Menghean Black Plague, but it was later re-integrated into the Myŏn dynasty. Following the Uzeri Rebellion, Lac lands were part of an independent Uzeristan, this time under a Taleyan ruling dynasty.

Lac unrest against their Taleyan rulers provided the justification for a Menghean military intervention in the early 20th century, which integrated Lac lands into the Federative Republic of Menghe. The national leadership in Donggyŏng granted the Lac people greater autonomy, and sharply curtailed the influence of the Taleyan elite, though tensions between the two groups would persist through the coming century. Under the Greater Menghean Empire, federal minority rights were revoked, and state policy favored assimilation of the Lac through coerced conversions to Sindoism and imposition of the Menghean language. Anti-Meng, pro-independence sentiment grew during the Pan-Septentrion War, but after the Allied occupation authority restored Taleyan merchants to administrative posts in 1946, this gave way to anti-western sentiment. By the end of the Menghean War of Liberation, a major insurgency had broken out in Lac territory.

Initially, Lac insurgents favored independence over reintegration into Menghe. A provisional agreement in 1963 guaranteed the Lac their own Semi-Autonomous Province with cultural and legal autonomy, winning over enough militia units to restore Menghean control. The resulting Lakkian SAP, established in 1964, gave the Lac people protected linguistic, cultural, and social rights, and relegated Taleyans to a marginal social status, inverting the long-standing social pyramid. Nevertheless, political rights under the DPRM were sharply circumscribed, and the Menghean famine of 1985-87 took a heavy toll on the Lac population. Lac provincial autonomy continued after the Decembrist Revolution, though efforts to restore harmony between the Lac majority and the Taleyan minority have remained a source of tension, especially as rapid economic growth tips the balance in favor of urban areas.

Language

The Lakkian language (Tiếng Lạc) is the main language of the Lac people. It is an analytic language, and it does not have agglutinative variations for case, number, gender, or grammatical tense. It uses subject-verb-object word order and head-initial modifier ordering, and measure words for nouns. It is broken into predominantly single-syllable words, and makes use of six vowel tones. Many of these features resemble classical Menghean, though Lakkian is properly classified as part of the Lakkic language family; modern Botong-ŏ Menghean, based on the Donghae dialect, is markedly different.

Lakkian did borrow a large number of vocabulary words from the ancient Menghean language, sometimes alone and sometimes in compound formations with native Lakkian words. An estimated 45% of Lakkian words were formed this way. Directly borrowed words have matching Gomun characters, though the pronunciation and word order may differ. For example, "Menghe" in Menghean is Mengguk (멩국 / 孟國), while in Lakkian 孟國 is pronounced Mạnh Quốc; the Chŏnsan mountains (천산 / 天山) are pronounced Thiên Sơn. Many of these loanwords were imported by the 3rd-century kingdom of Tống, which adopted classical Menghean characters for government proclamations and documents; previously, the Lakkian language had no writing system.

A revised writing system, known as Chữ Nôm, appeared in the 14th century, following the Yi dynasty's invasion. In addition to existing and new Menghean loanwords, it borrowed some Comun characters to represent the phonetic sounds of indigenous Lakkian words, and even created a number of characters with no Menghean counterpart by combining or removing Gomun radicals (e.g., 𠀧 ba for "three," 𡗶 giời for "sky," 𧘇 ấy for "that/those") to indicate a new meaning or pronunciation.

Naming customs

Shahidic Lacs traditionally have three-part names. As in other parts of East Hemithea, the family name is placed first, and is inherited from the father, though women generally keep their surnames when marrying. This is followed by two given names: one from the traditional lexicon of Lakkian-language names, and one from Quranic scripture. For example, a person with the name Ngô Đửc Ali has the family name Ngô, the given name Đửc, and the Shahidic name Ali.

Traditionally, the Lakkian name is used in most everyday settings, while the Shahidic name is used in religious settings. The two may also be used together in contexts where it is important to distinguish between two people with the same Lakkian given name. Today, official government documents, such as the Resident ID card, treat the two as a combined, two-part given name, and the shortened version as an everyday nickname.

In formal settings, it is customary for Lac individuals to be addressed by their first name, usually with an appended honorific. For example, a woman named Võ Kiệm Fatima would normally be addressed as chị Kiệm, "Mrs. Kiệm," rather than "Mrs. Võ." The same applies to titles like "Mayor," "General," and "Chairman."

See also

• Meng
• Daryz