Names Galore

One of the fascinating things about Thailand is the name given to a new born child. Aside from their proper names, they are given nick names that consists of Thai words which has meanings both literally and creatively.

I remember having a class many years ago where three of my students are named after food: Voon (jelly), Donut and Yam Roll. Then there's the other class, former students of mine called Cookie and her cousin Eclair. Throw in a child named Pizza and another called IceCream and I probably had a party that year.

I was fortunate to have two sets of triplets one year in my teaching career and they are aptly called Neung (one), Song (two), and Sarm (three). The first set of triplets were a boy and two girls while the second one were two boys and one girl. Irregardless of their sex, the names are used to distinguish who was born first among the three siblings. One of the set of triplets got another sibling and you might have guessed his name, Si meaning four.

There are many names given to children of which they bring as they grow old such as Mook, Pim, Nat, Pee, Naam, Shin and the like. Foreign sounding names are also in such as Tempo, Ice, Print, Guitar, Mint, Elle, Gunza, and Music.

I have a colleague whose name is Last because she is the youngest in the family while her brother is named First. My subsitute trainer is named Glang which means middle so I was right when I told him that he must be the middle child. He showed me the photo of his brothers and told me that there are three of them in the family. The eldest is named Yai (big) and the youngest is Lek (small) so put them together, one would have three different sizes. For a while, I stopped and smiled as my intriguing mind was making note whether the sizes would mean another thing. Guess I just have to put the matter into rest since there's no way I will be able to find out, naughty me!

If you are wondering what mine is, I mean, my Thai name, it's Hern Fah.