The first big wave of Vietnamese immigration to the U.S. began after the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
Four temporary immigration centers were set up in the U.S. to process the refugees. The largest of these was Fort Chaffee in Arkansas.
By the end of 1975, nearly 51,000 immigrants had been processed at Fort Chaffee. In the meanwhile, 325 babies were born to the refugees living there.
And what name appeared for the first time — both as a girl name and as a boy name — in the U.S. baby name data in 1975? The name Chaffee:
| Boys named Chaffee | Girls named Chaffee | |
| 1977 | . | . |
| 1976 | . | . |
| 1975 | 5* | 5* |
| 1974 | . | . |
| 1973 | . | . |
So far, that’s the only year the name Chaffee has been popular enough to appear in the data (which, due to privacy concerns, only includes names given to at least five babies per gender, per year).
Were these 10 babies the children of Ft. Chaffee refugees?
I can’t say for sure, but I can tell you that all 5 of the baby boys were born in Arkansas. (Not sure about the baby girls.) Also, nearly all of the people I’ve found who were born in 1975 and named Chaffee had Vietnamese surnames.
Interestingly, I did come across a Chicago-based business coach named Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen. I don’t know what year he was born, though.
So, how did Fort Chaffee get its name? It was named in honor of Major General Adna R. Chaffee, Jr., (1884-1941) whose surname can be traced back to the Old French word chauf, meaning “bald.”
P.S. One of the babies born at Ft. Chaffee in 1975 was Dat Nguyen, the first Vietnamese-American to play in the NFL.
Sources:
- Vietnamese Americans – Wikipedia
- Indochinese Resettlement Program – Encyclopedia of Arkansas
- Thompson, Larry Clinton. Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus, 1975-1982. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010.
- Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- SSA
Images: Adapted from Family with three children holding suitcases and President Gerald Ford standing with children (both public domain) via University of California
[Latest update: Feb. 2026]
