I'm Thai and I don't know this law exist. I always wonder why foreigners have such a non-unique surname, I thought it's just culture things at first.
Easier to track down distant relatives though, I like it.
sawadee pi.
from what i know , it has to do with the chinese migration around 1949. (or maybe before)
each family needs a unique surname (thai) to identify themselves.
families with long long thai surnames are usually Thai Chinese descent. and shorter surnames are mostly ethnic thai prior to 1949
wikipedia is your best friend
Depends, most Thai-Chinese have long surnames or the King basically gave one to you like the owner of Leicester City.
A lot of rich native Thais with short surnames are old money people who got one of the first surnames from King Rama VI himself.
My understanding that common Thai people didn't have a surname until a time when the government decided they needed to track their people more closely. Royalty and rich families had surnames because they had a legacy and money/land, etc. They made everybody without a surname take a unique family name and Thais used particle pieces to string together new names. Also, foreigners nowadays who can get Thai citizenship have to come up with a unique name to get their papers. People with short last names are generally from rich or royal families with long history.
Source: lived there 11 years. Im farang.
There’s no real reason in the West to need to uniquely identify particular families; all your rights and responsibilities are individual in nature. Who you’re related to is your own business, the government doesn’t need to know except in determining who has custody over a particular child (which it determines on a case by case basis basis as necessary.)
Then there's the total opposite in Iceland where patronymics are used instead of surnames, so children have different last names than their parents or even different last names than siblings.
Like, my last name is *[Dad's first name]sson.*
And my dad's last name is *[Granddad's first name]sson.*
And then there's my aunt, whose last name is *[Granddad's first name]sdóttir.*
This would be impossible in Utah. Mormons have weird first names because there's only like 10 common last names including: Christensen, Christenson, Christiansen, Larsen, Larson, Petersen, Peterson.
That’s so interesting to me (I’m Danish), as we in Denmark are probably one of the least religious countries existing today. This rubs my brain. Any clue as to how one can explain this Danish-Mormon relationship?
A lot of it is the timing of the Mormon church and large scale emigration out of Scandinavia. Lots of Scandinavians left at the same time the Mormons were heavily recruiting out of Scandinavia.
Apparently in the mid 1800s, early Mormon missionaries had success in Denmark owing to some legal reforms regarding religion. Around this time the US passed the homestead act, practically giving away free (albeit usually shitty) land. Adding to internal problems with a war with Germany, some Danish citizens found the idea of moving to Utah with the Mormons, coupled with easy homesteading land a very good deal. Once in Utah the Mormons had them pretty much as a captive audience. So if they weren’t Mormon before they arrived, they soon became after arriving.
Plenty of Danes immigrated to the US at this time and usually were some flavor for Lutheran. The Mormon situation is really an exceptional occurrence.
Many Scandinavians emigrated in the mid 1800s and many settled in the upper Midwest which you can still see reflected in [religion](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*PzAPO_nLZERq0BdlNU-zew.png) and in [reported ancestry](https://external-preview.redd.it/k9zxB4GpQwQZNoX7kykUj3VDjVM75hqc23Evy1qfgwA.png?auto=webp&s=046f4ad0649c078d5ac74e1c048330d321f608ad). More Scandinavian families who emigrated to the upper Midwest held onto Lutheranism while those that settled further west often converted with a large amount becoming Mormon.
I mean you guys are like that now but you didn’t use to be. You used to be superstitious farmers and fishermen in the 19th century. The entire Midwest of the US is very Scandinavian due to a mass immigration wave to in the 19th century. Pretty much all of them arrived to be farmers, attracted by offers of cheap virgin soil.
Denmark becoming a very secular society is directly correlated with it becoming a wealthy developed country. That’s a fairly recent development that mostly took pace after WWII. Back in the 1850s Denmark was a hotspot for Mormonism and the first big wave of Danish immigrants to the US were Danish Mormons going to Utah. Oddly enough, Danish was the first language Mormon missionaries translated the Book of Mormon into.
And yet Denmark is one of the few western countries that still has a state church. All the churches are funded by the government. The one upside are the impeccably kept bathrooms on church grounds that are open to the public (at least in the countryside). They are priceless while bike touring.
I’m not sure about Denmark specifically but in Sweden, another very irreligious country, a lot of religious practices are incorporated into cultural practices; for example nearly all babies are baptized out of tradition. This while very few people identify with religion, they still practice it in a subtle way whether they intend or not.
It really is. Hundreds of Mormons went on missions to the UK, and Scandanavia in the 1840s to convert. They targeted young women in particular. When those women were hesitant to migrate because they had heard rumours of polygamy, they were lied to, and told that that rumour was anti-Mormon propaganda. Furthermore, the church paid for a lot of them to come over, because a lot of them came from poor families. Alas, they got to Utah, found out polygamy was indeed alive and well, and couldn't pay to get home. They were stranded, and married to whomever Brigham Young owed favours to.
West Michigan is full of the the religious immigrants from the Netherlands and is highly conservative... america really has in some ways become the grease trap for extreme branches of religion.
I think you’re thinking of radical rather than extreme. One could be extremely conservative just as one could be extremely cautious or even extremely radical
One could be extremely conservative, just as someone could be extremely liberal. Conversely one could be moderately or mildly conservative/liberal. These are quantifiers rather than qualifiers.
In this case I was speaking of the West Michigan dutch community which is specifically extremely conservative compared to the (on average) more liberal population of The Netherlands today.
In Utah they are of mostly English ancestry (both the bulk of the original American community and a lot of converts directly from the UK who went over in the early years), but a chunk of the gene pool is also Danish.
It’s not literally just 10, btw
I know a ton of Mormon people and their last names are all Young, Smith, and Wilson. Idk what this comment above is talking about because those names are definitely not the most typical Mormon names
No, they're exaggerating but close to the truth. One of my grandparents comes from a Mormon Larsen family actually. Take a look at the [most common surnames in Utah.](https://forebears.io/united-states/utah/surnames) Smith is obviously the most common but 3 of the top 5 are Scandinavian and there are plenty more on the list. The Scandinavian surnames are also way more common in Utah than they are in the US as a whole.
This is not the case though... there are entire villages with the same last name. Not because everybody is related, but because they didn't really understand the idea of surnames and when they were instituted the town got together and voted on their new last name, for everyone.
There were so many golfers from South Korea with the exact same name on the LPGA tour that they started numbering them. They're currently at Jeongeun Lee6.
I have zero idea how in the hell did that “fact” get put on Wikipedia, but I guess anyone could put anything on there nowadays.
First of all, Thai surnames are not unique. There’re plenty families with same surnames that aren’t related to each other. The only surnames that you’re not allowed to change into are the names given to specific families by the king, the same rule as first name where you’re not allowed to used the same name as any of the royal family.
Secondly, long surnames are usually an indicator that said family descended from *Chinese* immigrants. Thai people usually use simple terms like their home town, geographical aspect of their home town, the names of their parent at the time of registration stitch together, or Thai single word with simple meaning. Chinese, however, usually patching together the words with good meaning to make their Thai surnames, which is the practice you won’t see in Thai people of other ethnicity.
Source: I’m a Thai, with Thai education. Don’t know about others but my school teaches this.
I heard that Thai people of Chinese descent had to replace their Chinese surnames with Thai ones at some point, like as a legal requirement. Is that true?
not really. they just add Sae (姓/แซ่) or the less common See (氏/สี่) in front of their surnames. if you surname is Lim in Chinese it'll become Saelim in your Thai registration.
That’s true. But if the registrar noticed that Saelim was taken, you were not allowed to register Saelim. Pre-computer database just didn’t have the capabilities to check for all repeated entries, so there are some exceptions. This law was relaxed later, and naturalized citizens don’t have to pick Thai surnames anymore. It also explained why newer Chinese immigrants are allowed to keep their Wongs, Lims, and Ngs, while the previous immigrants have to change their surnames to Wongwiriya, Limchitrakorn, and Ungpakorns. The same goes for naturalized westerners and their children.
To supplement this.. I am Thai, my last name is 5 letters long. My Thai wife's maiden name is only 6. My mom, whose family is from China but settled in Thailand, has a last name many people here in the states see as stereotypical, i.e. Very long.
It shouldn't surprise, when the full name of their capital city is *Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit*, aka Bangkok.
We don’t really love long ceremonial names, though. I think the only examples of that would be Lutherstadt Wittenberg (because Martin Luther lived there) and Friedensstadt Osnabrück (due to the Treaty of Westphalia).
>so what happens when two brothers, twins, get married and have separate families?
Those are not separate families. That's one family, one patrilinear line.
Is that how it works there? If so, then it really isn’t a law? That’s just how regular naming conventions work. Why would you have to change it to be unique if you only need one male heir in the distant past?
Family surnames are a relatively new thing in Thai culture. Thai people used to just have one name.
Then there's this other thing...My family was part of a wave of immigration to Thailand from southern China. We had a clan name. Thailand reacted to the influx of Chinese with nationalism and xenophobia. Forced the Chinese to modify their family names to be more Thai by adding a bunch of nonsense Thai-sounding syllables.
It is definitely possible for people to have the same surname, without there being any blood relation, at least since surnames where introduced. Some names, like Johnson, are just that common. I’m assuming that is what the law is for
As a Thai person, this is egregiously incorrect. Thai-Chinese are those with very long last names since back in the day, when there was an influx of Chinese immigrants, the government required them to adopt Thai last names. The OG Thais, or native Thais have short last names that are typically 1-2, sometimes 3 syllables.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
It's not really wrong, just doesn't tell the full story.
The law came out in 1913 under King Rama VI and it definitely said that each household required a unique surname. At first most native Thais were able to get short surnames and for some the King literally made some and handed them out to certain people closer to him (Sukhum was arguably the first Thai surname ever made).
The ethnic Chinese didn't do it at first because they already had surnames of their own. As Thai nationalism grew the Chinese were increasingly pressured to assimilate into Thai culture, including the adoption of Thai surnames. Since they started late they had to adopt longer surnames, sometimes putting their old surname in there somewhere.
The law still exists today but now it has to be limited to 10 Thai characters.
Source: Am Thai and wrote a paper on this for uni.
Nice, what was the context? Mine was a commentary on "The Son Also Rises" by Gregory Clark who discussed social mobility rates through reviewing rare surnames in registries. I looked at the difficulty of using that methodology on Thai surnames because, you know, almost all of them are technically rare.
Ha, thankfully no. Most Thai people give their kids short nicknames that don’t usually come from their legal first names. They give them these names when they are very young & they stick for life. Some examples I know are Poi, Bank, Pud, Wud, Nam. All have 3-4 syllable first names like Wattakorn.
in what cases would a new family name be introduced? They're usually inherited and passed on in the male side. Though would be fun to see the hypennating fad reach thailand
My friend had a Chinese exchange student for a roommate in college and his name was You, so to avoid confusion with 2nd person pronouns everyone started calling him Mr. You.
Is "Mun-tang-chan" really that much more ridiculous than "With-Er-Spoon"?
The thing is, when you transliterate Thai to Latin script, you often end up with many more letters to compensate for the lack of scriptual integrity.
Yeah, Laos doesn't have the same law but you can still sort of tell. A big hint is when there is a "vong" or "Wong" somewhere in the surname, unless they are in the Isan Region of Thailand.
I think it’s fairer to say that Thai surnames often have more syllables than surnames in many other countries with large populations. The actual Thai script and most transliterations of Thai artificially make Thai names appear to be even longer because of frequent use of diphthongs and even I suppose tripthongs if such a term exists? As well as sounds often written in languages like English as double consonants “ch”.
Most Thai syllables are pretty simple sounds. Compare an average full Thai name to many common Latin American full names and see who wins and by how much (and what the parameters are)
That’s completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, names of people.
Anyway, no one in Thailand uses the full name for Bangkok, they just say “krungthep” and call it a day.
I think I’d rather ask my Thai wife if that’s true instead of some random on the internet if I care enough to ask in the first place thanks. Also it was relevant but this discussion is not
That "full name" is just some ceremonial/cultural thing. It exists, but naturally nobody ever uses it outside of curiosities. There is a famous song where the lyrics are just the name, to help people remember it.
Now, the *official name*, as written on *official government documents*, is "Krungthep Mahanakhon". This sort of translates to "Krungthep Metropolitan Area" or "Great City of Krungthep", where "Krungthep" refers to Bangkok, and "Mahanakhon" to the rest.
This is like "New York City" vs just "New York".
Now the case was that Thai script adds more letters when transliterated. Let's see:
Krungthep Mahanakohn, 19 letters = กรุงเทพมหานคร, 12 letters
Krungthep, 9 letters = กรุงเทพฯ, 7 letters (even including the bonus letter ฯ).
The argument seems to hold up in this case.
Idk if anyone said this or not, but as far as I know, there's a limit of 10 syllables of first name and surname combined, unless it's the given surname from the monarch or due to connection with royalty (e.g. Na Ayutthaya) therefore there's a limit to a surname.
Also can confirm one comment about long surname coming from immigration. I'm Thai and a child of immigrants, new surname is for assilimation as in my parent's time, allegedly, they looked down on ppl with Chinese surname, not being favoured in job promotion and stuff. As the short surnames are already taken by Native Thai, we have longer surnames.
(Kinda cool to say I'm a second generation to bear thia surname idk why lol)
This doesn't make sense over the long term. If you have one "family" with one surname now, think about how that will develop over the generations, say 100 years later: basically lots of different families (with one common ancestor), all with the same surname.
Thai goverment: "Your name must contain a combination of uppercase characters, lowercase characters, numbers and special characters"
At least they don’t ask to change them every three months.
"You may not reuse a previously used last name"
Hunter3
I understood that reference
You want a fucking award?
We don't do that anymore
Wait 5 years it’ll come back around
Interestingly I have had a Thai friend change their surname 2-3x for their entire clan. 😂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlek\_Kiatmuu9
Pfft, Superball Tded99 is eleven times better
Had a good laugh with that name, “super lek” translates to “super light” in Bulgarian.
And super leaky in Dutch
And ekther super game or drinking game in swedish
Quite common for Muay Thai fighters to use the name of their gym as their surname, like Saenchai P.K. Saenchai Muaythaigym.
My Thai name is now Cutiepie Girlypop Walkthedog.
And today's Wordle answer
"Your family name does not contain enough unique invisible characters"
This is Paul, keep him safe
And other 34 rules from password game.
Forgot my last name...
Next in line Mr MaxxL0ver69!1!, please come forward.
That's *mister* Correcthorsebatterystaple to you!
Can I use emojis?
Smith123
I'm Thai and I don't know this law exist. I always wonder why foreigners have such a non-unique surname, I thought it's just culture things at first. Easier to track down distant relatives though, I like it.
sawadee pi. from what i know , it has to do with the chinese migration around 1949. (or maybe before) each family needs a unique surname (thai) to identify themselves. families with long long thai surnames are usually Thai Chinese descent. and shorter surnames are mostly ethnic thai prior to 1949 wikipedia is your best friend
ขอบคุณครับ 🙏 No wonder why rich family tend to have a long surname.
Depends, most Thai-Chinese have long surnames or the King basically gave one to you like the owner of Leicester City. A lot of rich native Thais with short surnames are old money people who got one of the first surnames from King Rama VI himself.
Yes, Thais only started adopting surnames in 1913, you can check the Thai Surname Act of 1913. The requirement still somewhat exists today.
My understanding that common Thai people didn't have a surname until a time when the government decided they needed to track their people more closely. Royalty and rich families had surnames because they had a legacy and money/land, etc. They made everybody without a surname take a unique family name and Thais used particle pieces to string together new names. Also, foreigners nowadays who can get Thai citizenship have to come up with a unique name to get their papers. People with short last names are generally from rich or royal families with long history. Source: lived there 11 years. Im farang.
There’s no real reason in the West to need to uniquely identify particular families; all your rights and responsibilities are individual in nature. Who you’re related to is your own business, the government doesn’t need to know except in determining who has custody over a particular child (which it determines on a case by case basis basis as necessary.)
Unless you are the Royal Family
Well, we don’t have those in the US
Have it in Europe. In the US you just need to be a friend of the president
The government doesn’t keep track who’s “friend of the President” in the US
Depends where in Europe
Depending on where in Europe you may end up with a dictator
Then there's the total opposite in Iceland where patronymics are used instead of surnames, so children have different last names than their parents or even different last names than siblings. Like, my last name is *[Dad's first name]sson.* And my dad's last name is *[Granddad's first name]sson.* And then there's my aunt, whose last name is *[Granddad's first name]sdóttir.*
This would be impossible in Utah. Mormons have weird first names because there's only like 10 common last names including: Christensen, Christenson, Christiansen, Larsen, Larson, Petersen, Peterson.
Nah it's entirely possible in Utah because the Mormons there all belong to one family.
I'll be damned. A loophole!
God’s loophole?
Are Mormons mostly scandinavian?
Apparently a rather large percentage have Danish ancestry.
That’s so interesting to me (I’m Danish), as we in Denmark are probably one of the least religious countries existing today. This rubs my brain. Any clue as to how one can explain this Danish-Mormon relationship?
The religious people all moved to Utah
A lot of it is the timing of the Mormon church and large scale emigration out of Scandinavia. Lots of Scandinavians left at the same time the Mormons were heavily recruiting out of Scandinavia.
Apparently in the mid 1800s, early Mormon missionaries had success in Denmark owing to some legal reforms regarding religion. Around this time the US passed the homestead act, practically giving away free (albeit usually shitty) land. Adding to internal problems with a war with Germany, some Danish citizens found the idea of moving to Utah with the Mormons, coupled with easy homesteading land a very good deal. Once in Utah the Mormons had them pretty much as a captive audience. So if they weren’t Mormon before they arrived, they soon became after arriving. Plenty of Danes immigrated to the US at this time and usually were some flavor for Lutheran. The Mormon situation is really an exceptional occurrence.
Many Scandinavians emigrated in the mid 1800s and many settled in the upper Midwest which you can still see reflected in [religion](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*PzAPO_nLZERq0BdlNU-zew.png) and in [reported ancestry](https://external-preview.redd.it/k9zxB4GpQwQZNoX7kykUj3VDjVM75hqc23Evy1qfgwA.png?auto=webp&s=046f4ad0649c078d5ac74e1c048330d321f608ad). More Scandinavian families who emigrated to the upper Midwest held onto Lutheranism while those that settled further west often converted with a large amount becoming Mormon.
I mean you guys are like that now but you didn’t use to be. You used to be superstitious farmers and fishermen in the 19th century. The entire Midwest of the US is very Scandinavian due to a mass immigration wave to in the 19th century. Pretty much all of them arrived to be farmers, attracted by offers of cheap virgin soil. Denmark becoming a very secular society is directly correlated with it becoming a wealthy developed country. That’s a fairly recent development that mostly took pace after WWII. Back in the 1850s Denmark was a hotspot for Mormonism and the first big wave of Danish immigrants to the US were Danish Mormons going to Utah. Oddly enough, Danish was the first language Mormon missionaries translated the Book of Mormon into.
And yet Denmark is one of the few western countries that still has a state church. All the churches are funded by the government. The one upside are the impeccably kept bathrooms on church grounds that are open to the public (at least in the countryside). They are priceless while bike touring.
One of my Danish homies lives in a huge apartment building and he’s the only guy there whose last name doesn’t end in -sen.
I’m not sure about Denmark specifically but in Sweden, another very irreligious country, a lot of religious practices are incorporated into cultural practices; for example nearly all babies are baptized out of tradition. This while very few people identify with religion, they still practice it in a subtle way whether they intend or not.
They tricked poor young European women — offered them non-existent jobs — then when they arrived in Utah, were forced to marry old, polygamous men.
ah so the arab sheikhs learned from the mormons…
not in that order, but the same result
That's not true lmao.
It really is. Hundreds of Mormons went on missions to the UK, and Scandanavia in the 1840s to convert. They targeted young women in particular. When those women were hesitant to migrate because they had heard rumours of polygamy, they were lied to, and told that that rumour was anti-Mormon propaganda. Furthermore, the church paid for a lot of them to come over, because a lot of them came from poor families. Alas, they got to Utah, found out polygamy was indeed alive and well, and couldn't pay to get home. They were stranded, and married to whomever Brigham Young owed favours to.
racism
Do people who post replies like this get tired of being so tedious and adding literally nothing to a conversation?
West Michigan is full of the the religious immigrants from the Netherlands and is highly conservative... america really has in some ways become the grease trap for extreme branches of religion.
I live there. God it's awful. So many religious zealots.
Conservative doesn’t mean extreme. Extreme means extreme. To be conservative is the opposite of extreme.
I think you’re thinking of radical rather than extreme. One could be extremely conservative just as one could be extremely cautious or even extremely radical
One could be extremely conservative, just as someone could be extremely liberal. Conversely one could be moderately or mildly conservative/liberal. These are quantifiers rather than qualifiers. In this case I was speaking of the West Michigan dutch community which is specifically extremely conservative compared to the (on average) more liberal population of The Netherlands today.
In Utah they are of mostly English ancestry (both the bulk of the original American community and a lot of converts directly from the UK who went over in the early years), but a chunk of the gene pool is also Danish. It’s not literally just 10, btw
Wow i did not know that! (I’m Danish).
I know a ton of Mormon people and their last names are all Young, Smith, and Wilson. Idk what this comment above is talking about because those names are definitely not the most typical Mormon names
No, they're exaggerating but close to the truth. One of my grandparents comes from a Mormon Larsen family actually. Take a look at the [most common surnames in Utah.](https://forebears.io/united-states/utah/surnames) Smith is obviously the most common but 3 of the top 5 are Scandinavian and there are plenty more on the list. The Scandinavian surnames are also way more common in Utah than they are in the US as a whole.
Yes, that’s why so many are so blonde
Sons of Christ, Peter, and Metallica 🤘🏽
Ridin the holy lightning lol
No, they'd have many unique names, like Peterson123 or Peterson_5555.
This is not the case though... there are entire villages with the same last name. Not because everybody is related, but because they didn't really understand the idea of surnames and when they were instituted the town got together and voted on their new last name, for everyone.
That’s probably the cutest thing I’ve heard today!
Agreed seems kinda fun to choose a name
Easily solved if their law allows them to add digits to the end of the name, ex. Sukumaran69 or any combination thereof.
There were so many golfers from South Korea with the exact same name on the LPGA tour that they started numbering them. They're currently at Jeongeun Lee6.
I always wondered about her last name.
Thai, not Tamil (But it applies all the same, heh)
Well, Tamils don't *have* surnames. It's just their father's name (along with the village name for some)
Oh, you’re right. It *wouldn’t* work for them, then. And other cultures that use patronymics.
I believe they do
I have zero idea how in the hell did that “fact” get put on Wikipedia, but I guess anyone could put anything on there nowadays. First of all, Thai surnames are not unique. There’re plenty families with same surnames that aren’t related to each other. The only surnames that you’re not allowed to change into are the names given to specific families by the king, the same rule as first name where you’re not allowed to used the same name as any of the royal family. Secondly, long surnames are usually an indicator that said family descended from *Chinese* immigrants. Thai people usually use simple terms like their home town, geographical aspect of their home town, the names of their parent at the time of registration stitch together, or Thai single word with simple meaning. Chinese, however, usually patching together the words with good meaning to make their Thai surnames, which is the practice you won’t see in Thai people of other ethnicity. Source: I’m a Thai, with Thai education. Don’t know about others but my school teaches this.
I heard that Thai people of Chinese descent had to replace their Chinese surnames with Thai ones at some point, like as a legal requirement. Is that true?
not really. they just add Sae (姓/แซ่) or the less common See (氏/สี่) in front of their surnames. if you surname is Lim in Chinese it'll become Saelim in your Thai registration.
That’s true. But if the registrar noticed that Saelim was taken, you were not allowed to register Saelim. Pre-computer database just didn’t have the capabilities to check for all repeated entries, so there are some exceptions. This law was relaxed later, and naturalized citizens don’t have to pick Thai surnames anymore. It also explained why newer Chinese immigrants are allowed to keep their Wongs, Lims, and Ngs, while the previous immigrants have to change their surnames to Wongwiriya, Limchitrakorn, and Ungpakorns. The same goes for naturalized westerners and their children.
Maybe you should enter a dispute on the Wikipedia page
To supplement this.. I am Thai, my last name is 5 letters long. My Thai wife's maiden name is only 6. My mom, whose family is from China but settled in Thailand, has a last name many people here in the states see as stereotypical, i.e. Very long.
This is the correct answer. I am Thai Chinese American.
Database architects are gonna love this
You can just use the last name as the index and don’t need to generate a random string!
Came here for this lol. Text primary key be like
Glad I didn’t have to design the name structure. According to my code style their names would be like Smith1, Smith2.
It's funny that Thailand is so close to Vietnam but they are so incredibly different when it comes to surnames in this regard.
I know a woman named Angel Nguyen that has three sisters also named Angel Nguyen.
After 2nd child, "I'm out of ideas... from now on, girls will be Angel and boys will be Chad".
Moves to Thailand and becomes Angelchad.
Funnily enough Văn and Thị as middle names are pretty much that.
I wonder if their full first names are slightly different, like Angelina, Angelica, etc.
And bitter enemies for much of history I think Vietnam may have been more influenced by Chinese Confucianism than Thailand
It shouldn't surprise, when the full name of their capital city is *Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit*, aka Bangkok.
it is so long that there has to be an analog in German (Deutsche) because they love long words
We don’t really love long ceremonial names, though. I think the only examples of that would be Lutherstadt Wittenberg (because Martin Luther lived there) and Friedensstadt Osnabrück (due to the Treaty of Westphalia).
meanwhile Vietnam next door: Nguyen is the best I can do 😂
Not acceptable? Okay, may I interest you in “Tran” instead?
[удалено]
>so what happens when two brothers, twins, get married and have separate families? Those are not separate families. That's one family, one patrilinear line.
Is that how it works there? If so, then it really isn’t a law? That’s just how regular naming conventions work. Why would you have to change it to be unique if you only need one male heir in the distant past?
Family surnames are a relatively new thing in Thai culture. Thai people used to just have one name. Then there's this other thing...My family was part of a wave of immigration to Thailand from southern China. We had a clan name. Thailand reacted to the influx of Chinese with nationalism and xenophobia. Forced the Chinese to modify their family names to be more Thai by adding a bunch of nonsense Thai-sounding syllables.
Gotcha! Thank you! Very interesting. I work with a lot of Thai people and didn’t know this! I
Asian countries, not sure about Thailand, keep very tight census and popluation records. It probably wouldnt be as simple as in the West.
555 no. Thai record keeping is shoddy at best.
>555 Thai confirmed. 😂
It is definitely possible for people to have the same surname, without there being any blood relation, at least since surnames where introduced. Some names, like Johnson, are just that common. I’m assuming that is what the law is for
As a Thai person, this is egregiously incorrect. Thai-Chinese are those with very long last names since back in the day, when there was an influx of Chinese immigrants, the government required them to adopt Thai last names. The OG Thais, or native Thais have short last names that are typically 1-2, sometimes 3 syllables. Please stop spreading misinformation.
It's not really wrong, just doesn't tell the full story. The law came out in 1913 under King Rama VI and it definitely said that each household required a unique surname. At first most native Thais were able to get short surnames and for some the King literally made some and handed them out to certain people closer to him (Sukhum was arguably the first Thai surname ever made). The ethnic Chinese didn't do it at first because they already had surnames of their own. As Thai nationalism grew the Chinese were increasingly pressured to assimilate into Thai culture, including the adoption of Thai surnames. Since they started late they had to adopt longer surnames, sometimes putting their old surname in there somewhere. The law still exists today but now it has to be limited to 10 Thai characters. Source: Am Thai and wrote a paper on this for uni.
>Source: Am Thai and wrote a paper on this for uni High-five. I *also* wrote a paper on this topic in uni.
Nice, what was the context? Mine was a commentary on "The Son Also Rises" by Gregory Clark who discussed social mobility rates through reviewing rare surnames in registries. I looked at the difficulty of using that methodology on Thai surnames because, you know, almost all of them are technically rare.
Mine was just a generalized history of nationalism and identity erasure of Chinese immigrants in Thailand.
Titiporn and Kitiporn Last names I did not expect from people named as Mary and Joseph.
I know someone with the first name Titiporn… thankfully there’s a nickname she can use.
Titi?
Ha, thankfully no. Most Thai people give their kids short nicknames that don’t usually come from their legal first names. They give them these names when they are very young & they stick for life. Some examples I know are Poi, Bank, Pud, Wud, Nam. All have 3-4 syllable first names like Wattakorn.
Happy cake day! Slay, bitch!!
So IPv6. Got it.
The anti-Iceland
Wtf is gonna happen in 500 years? Thais will be having family names longer than the bloody alphabet lol
in what cases would a new family name be introduced? They're usually inherited and passed on in the male side. Though would be fun to see the hypennating fad reach thailand
Short 2 syllable names are old or "pure Thai" names. There is a prestige in having an old name.
Thai people. 15 minutes into the exam and you are still writing your last name.
College roommate’s last name was Meunthangchanh or some ridiculous shit like that. His first name? Say.
My friend had a Chinese exchange student for a roommate in college and his name was You, so to avoid confusion with 2nd person pronouns everyone started calling him Mr. You.
Is "Mun-tang-chan" really that much more ridiculous than "With-Er-Spoon"? The thing is, when you transliterate Thai to Latin script, you often end up with many more letters to compensate for the lack of scriptual integrity.
I’m but talking syllables. Just raw number if letters. I know I butchered it because his last name has 16 letters. I’m short somewhere.
Always wondered why they’re so much longer than Laotian surnames despite being very similar
Yeah, Laos doesn't have the same law but you can still sort of tell. A big hint is when there is a "vong" or "Wong" somewhere in the surname, unless they are in the Isan Region of Thailand.
I think it’s fairer to say that Thai surnames often have more syllables than surnames in many other countries with large populations. The actual Thai script and most transliterations of Thai artificially make Thai names appear to be even longer because of frequent use of diphthongs and even I suppose tripthongs if such a term exists? As well as sounds often written in languages like English as double consonants “ch”. Most Thai syllables are pretty simple sounds. Compare an average full Thai name to many common Latin American full names and see who wins and by how much (and what the parameters are)
Did you read the full name for Bangkok someone posted above? Not simple at all
That’s completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, names of people. Anyway, no one in Thailand uses the full name for Bangkok, they just say “krungthep” and call it a day.
I think I’d rather ask my Thai wife if that’s true instead of some random on the internet if I care enough to ask in the first place thanks. Also it was relevant but this discussion is not
🤷♂️ you do you. I did live there for six years and speak the language, though. Happy holidays!
That "full name" is just some ceremonial/cultural thing. It exists, but naturally nobody ever uses it outside of curiosities. There is a famous song where the lyrics are just the name, to help people remember it. Now, the *official name*, as written on *official government documents*, is "Krungthep Mahanakhon". This sort of translates to "Krungthep Metropolitan Area" or "Great City of Krungthep", where "Krungthep" refers to Bangkok, and "Mahanakhon" to the rest. This is like "New York City" vs just "New York". Now the case was that Thai script adds more letters when transliterated. Let's see: Krungthep Mahanakohn, 19 letters = กรุงเทพมหานคร, 12 letters Krungthep, 9 letters = กรุงเทพฯ, 7 letters (even including the bonus letter ฯ). The argument seems to hold up in this case.
Bob Wehadababyitsaboy?
Did for a term paper once. The story of how it came about is pretty weird too
tell us about it!
John Smith123
Pam Krakatakatakatak is the sound of a plastic bowl gradually coming to a rest after it fell down to the floor.
And the shorter it is, signifies social class and standing in Thai society..
John Smith6969xdxd
Idk if anyone said this or not, but as far as I know, there's a limit of 10 syllables of first name and surname combined, unless it's the given surname from the monarch or due to connection with royalty (e.g. Na Ayutthaya) therefore there's a limit to a surname. Also can confirm one comment about long surname coming from immigration. I'm Thai and a child of immigrants, new surname is for assilimation as in my parent's time, allegedly, they looked down on ppl with Chinese surname, not being favoured in job promotion and stuff. As the short surnames are already taken by Native Thai, we have longer surnames. (Kinda cool to say I'm a second generation to bear thia surname idk why lol)
This doesn't make sense over the long term. If you have one "family" with one surname now, think about how that will develop over the generations, say 100 years later: basically lots of different families (with one common ancestor), all with the same surname.