Food & drinkMyths & disputes

banh mi

Vietnamese bánh mì is simply 'wheat bread', a native word for the baguettes the French brought; it came to mean the stuffed Saigon sandwich, which Vietnamese Americans made famous.

Weakest linkCertain

The story you may have heard

That bánh mì is a mangling of French pain de mie; Wiktionary calls this a folk etymology, since bánh mì is two Vietnamese words.

The road to American English

From Vietnamese to Japanese

From Vietnamese to French

From Vietnamese to Korean

From American English to English

1900Vietnamese

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.

Export “banh mi”

Embed “banh mi”

Save “banh mi”