Francisco de Pina

Francisco de Pina (1585–1625) was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary and interpreter, born at Guarda, who pioneered the romanization of Vietnamese. He entered the Jesuits in 1605 and studied at St Paul's College in Macau from 1611 to 1617.

In 1617 he arrived in Đàng Trong to work the missions at Hội An and Qui Nhơn. Drawing on João Rodrigues's Portuguese phonetic methods, used to transcribe Japanese, he devised the first Latin transcription of Vietnamese, the basis of the chữ Quốc ngữ alphabet. He drowned in December 1625 at Cửa Đại, rescuing guests from a wrecked boat.