An ancestral house (

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...

: ''nhà thờ họ'',

chữ Nôm Chữ Nôm (, ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented by new characters ...

: 茹悇𢩜 or

: ''từ đường'',

chữ Hán ( , ) are the Chinese characters that were used to write Literary Chinese in Vietnam, Literary Chinese (; ) and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary in Vietnamese language, Vietnamese. They were officially used in Vietnam after the Red River Delta region ...

: ) is a

traditional

place of worship A place of worship is a specially designed structure or space where individuals or a group of people such as a congregation come to perform acts of devotion, veneration, or religious study. A building constructed or used for this purpose is s ...

of a clan or its branches which is established by

male Male (Planet symbols, symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or Egg cell, ovum, in the process of fertilisation. A male organism cannot sexual repro ...

descendants of the paternal line. This type of worship place is most commonly seen in

northern Vietnam Northern Vietnam or '' Tonkin'' () is one of three geographical regions in Vietnam. It consists of three geographic sub-regions: the Northwest (Vùng Tây Bắc), the Northeast (Vùng Đông Bắc), and the Red River Delta (Đồng Bằng Sôn ...

as well as middle Vietnam. After a clan is divided into branches by males of

paternal line Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritanc ...

, the head of the main branch of a clan (''trưởng tộc'' in Vietnamese) would lead the place where all clan members worship the primitive ancestor and store the primary genealogical book. This place would be called ''nhà thờ đại tôn'' (). Other breaches of a clan would have their own ''nhà thờ họ'' in which the creators of these branches are worshipped; these ''nhà thờ họ'' are called ''nhà thờ chi họ'' (). The size and architecture of ''nhà thờ họ'' is depended on a clan's financial resources, donations from each of the male clan members and the

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

status of clan elders or patriarch. A ''nhà thờ họ'' is usually built follow the traditional 3 rooms house architecture in which the middle room is extended in the back so that a worship pedestal could be placed. The worship objects such as ''linh tọa'' (chair of the

ghosts In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...

), ''giá gương'' (glass stand), and ''ngai'' (throne) will be placed in this worship pedestal. The ngai holds a vermilion-painted-and-gold-gilded box, which contains family genealogical book, and is covered by a piece of red cloth. This is the most sacred site of a ''nhà thờ họ'', which people consider the gathering place of ancestors' soul. An ancestral

death anniversary A death anniversary (or deathday) is the anniversary of the death of a person. It is the opposite of birthday. It is a custom in several Asian cultures, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Myanmar ...

will be held yearly at ''nhà thờ họ'' and this anniversary is usually used as an occasion to renew the relationship between living clan members. Phong-tho

References

Further reading