Thai Name Generator

How the Thai Name Generator works

How the Thai name generator works

Thai names run given name first, then surname, in the Western order, but nothing else about them is Western. Surnames were only introduced in 1913, when King Vajiravudh required every family to register one, and the law demanded that each surname be unique to one family, so Thailand has no equivalent of Smith or Kim. The result is a stock of hundreds of thousands of invented surnames, built from Sanskrit and Pali roots meaning gold, glory, prosperity, jewel and lion, thong, sri, suwan, rattana, chai, and a Thai who meets a stranger with the same surname knows they are related. The older and grander families, and Chinese-Thai families who translated their names in the twentieth century, carry the long polysyllabic surnames, Sirivadhanabhakdi, Chearavanont, Shinawatra, which the generator mixes in occasionally; the ordinary ones are two or three syllables, Srisuwan, Boonmee, Jaidee. Given names are Sanskrit and Pali too, chosen by parents or a monk for auspicious meaning and often for the day of the week, and they are long: Kanokwan golden lotus, Siriporn glorious blessing, Nattapong wise lineage, Thanawat wealth and prosperity.

The formal name is for paperwork. In daily life every Thai has a chue len, a play name, given at birth and used by family, friends, colleagues and teachers, and the formal name may be unknown to close friends. Traditional nicknames are short Thai words, Nok bird, Ploy gem, Kwan spirit, Fah sky, Nam water, Bua lotus, Ton tree, Tee small; since the 1980s parents have favoured English words picked for their sound, Bank, Golf, Boat, Film, Ice, Beam, Gift, Mint, Fern, and these are now the most common nicknames among people under forty. The nickname is also used with a title, Khun Nok, and a surname is so rarely spoken that many Thais cannot say a colleague's. The generator's With nickname output gives the formal name with the nickname in brackets, as a Thai business card or Facebook profile does.

The romanisation follows the Royal Thai General System loosely, as Thais themselves do, so the same name can be spelled Somchai or Somchay, Srisuwan or Srisuvan. For the neighbouring Chinese order, the Chinese and Vietnamese pages; for the Sanskrit names that Thai shares with India, the Indian page.

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