Nguyễn Lộc
Vietnamese martial artist (1912–1960)
Nguyễn Lộc, (chữ Hán: 阮祿, Thạch Thất district, 8 April 1912 – 29 April 1960) was a Vietnamese martial artist and teacher. He was the founder of Vovinam (Việt Võ Đạo).
Grandmaster Nguyễn was born in Hữu Bằng village, Thạch Thất district, then part of Sơn Tây province, now a district of Hanoi. He was the eldest son of Nguyễn Dinh Xuyen (阮廷釧) and Nguyễn Thị Hoa (阮氏和) and had four other siblings; Nguyen Thi Thai (阮氏泰), Nguyen Dan (阮寅), Nguyen Ngo (阮海), and Nguyen Thi Bich Ha (阮氏碧河). His father's family had settled in Hữu Bằng village for many generations. Later on, the family would move to Hanoi where his father would meet an old master and ask the old master to teach his oldest son; young Grandmaster Nguyễn, traditional martial arts and wrestling techniques for his son's health & his ability to defend himself. It was from there he had his first experience with martial arts.
In his younger years he trained in traditional Vietnamese martial arts. In 1938, grandmaster Nguyễn who was already teaching the style to a few of his friends introduced his style "Vovinam" to the public. After a demonstration in 1939 in Hanoi, Vovinam quickly spread across the country, and internationally to the Vietnamese diaspora via France.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1354244. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1960, 1938 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nguyễn Lộc” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.