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This has been talked about endlessly in other threads.
The long and short of it is that for some people Saigon is and will always be Saigon and for others they like HCMC.

Garyleo are you from Saigon or HCMC ??

Saigon and Ho Chi Minh is the same place right?

If you call them the same place then you are obviously from Ho Chi Minh City

Care to explain the difference, don? I prefer Saigon as it sounds do much better.

Older or long time residence will always say Saigon and whereas younger or newer residents my call it Saigon but don't understand the difference.
On 2 July 1976, Saigon merged with the surrounding Gia Định Province and was officially renamed Ho Chi Minh City after Hồ Chí Minh (although the name Sài Gòn is still commonly used)from Wiki

From Wikipedia

Ho Chi Minh City has gone by several different names during its history, reflecting settlement by different ethnic, cultural and political groups. In the 1690s, Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyễn rulers of Huế to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the Mekong Delta and its surroundings. Control of the city and the area passed to the Vietnamese, who gave the city the official name of Gia Định (Hán tự: 嘉 定). This name remained until the time of French conquest in the 1860s, when the occupying force adopted the name Saigon for the city, a westernized form of the traditional name,[9] although the city was still indicated as 嘉 定 on Chinese maps until at least 1891.[10] Immediately after the communist takeover of South Vietnam in 1975, a provisional government renamed the city after Hồ Chí Minh, the late North Vietnamese leader.[nb 1] Even today, however, the informal name of Sài Gòn remains in daily speech both domestically and internationally, especially among the Vietnamese diaspora. In particular, Sài Gòn is still commonly used to refer to District 1.[11]
[edit]Etymology


Sài Gòn may refer to the kapok (bông gòn) trees that are common around the city.
Sài Gòn
An etymology of Sài Gòn is that Sài is a Sino-Vietnamese word (Hán tự: 柴) meaning "firewood, lops, twigs; palisade", while Gòn is another Sino-Vietnamese word (Hán tự: 棍) meaning "stick, pole, bole", and whose meaning evolved into "cotton" in Vietnamese (bông gòn, literally "cotton stick", i.e., "cotton plant", then shortened to gòn). This name may refer to the many kapok plants that the Khmer people had planted around Prey Nokor, and which can still be seen at Cây Mai temple and surrounding areas. It may also refer to the dense and tall forest that once existed around the city, a forest to which the Khmer name, Prey Nokor, already referred.[12]
Other proposed etymologies draw parallels from Tai-Ngon (堤 岸), the Cantonese name of Cholon, which means "embankment" (French: quais),[nb 2] and Vietnamese Sai Côn, a translation of the Khmer Prey Nokor (Khmer: ព្រៃនគរ). Prey means forest or jungle, and nokor is a Khmer word of Sanskrit origin meaning city or kingdom—thus, "forest city" or "forest kingdom".[nb 3]
Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh
The current official name, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, abbreviated Tp. HCM, is translated as Ho Chi Minh City, abbreviated HCMC, and in French as Hô Chi Minh Ville (the circumflex is sometimes omitted), abbreviated HCMV. The name commemorates Hồ Chí Minh, the pre-eminent North Vietnamese leader. This name, though not his given name, was one he favored throughout his later years. It combines a common Vietnamese surname (Hồ, 胡) with a given name meaning "enlightened will" (from Sino-Vietnamese 志 明; Chí meaning 'will' (or spirit), and Minh meaning 'light'), in essence, meaning "bringer of light".[13]