# Why and How Siam Changed to Thai?



## Qcumber

Why do you call this language "Thai"? Isn't it Siamese?


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## Thai Basil

"Thai" is the language/people of Thailand that we currently call.
"Siamese" is the old name of our language/or people when our country use to be name "Siam" in 200+ years ago.


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## Qcumber

Thai Basil said:


> "Thai" is the language/people of Thailand that we currently call.
> "Siamese" is the old name of our language/or people when our country use to be name "Siam" in 200+ years ago.


Now, Thailand is an English name, isn't it? I don't think _land_ is a Siamese term.
What was the reason why the Siamese government changed the name of their country at a given time in history? When did the change take place?


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## mplsray

Qcumber said:


> Now, Thailand is an English name, isn't it? I don't think _land_ is a Siamese term.
> What was the reason why the Siamese government changed the name of their country at a given time in history? When did the change take place?


 
An online search shows that after a coup in 1932, Siam became a constitutional monarchy. A few years later, in 1939, it changed its name to Thailand, meaning "Land of the Free," went back to the name Siam from 1945 to 1949, then became Thailand again.

Thailand is the English form of the name. The CIA Factbook shows the form of the name in Thai:_ Ratcha Anachak Thai_ in the long form and _Prathet Thai _in the short form.


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## Thai Basil

mplsray has it corrected.
The word "_Thai_" also means Thai people or we call in Thai "_Khon Thai_", for example "I am _Thai_".


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## übermönch

Qcumber said:


> I don't think _land_ is a Siamese term.


Obviously it isn't. It's a translation of the original Thai term.
Siam was an alternate geographical term Indochina, it previosly encompassed several states, while Thai refers to the most numerous ethnical group in the country, and, as noted already, to "Freedom".


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## Qcumber

übermönch said:


> Siam was an alternate geographical term [for] Indochina


I'm afraid there has never been any confusion between Siam and Indochina. Siam is in Indochina, but Siam is not Indochina. Have you forgotten Viet-Nam for instance?


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## Qcumber

mplsray said:


> An online search shows that after a coup in 1932, Siam became a constitutional monarchy. A few years later, in 1939, it changed its name to Thailand, meaning "Land of the Free," went back to the name Siam from 1945 to 1949, then became Thailand again ... _Prathet Thai _in the short form.


 
Thanks a lot. So it's quite recent.
To me "The Kingdom of Siam" sounds better than "Thailand".
I have the strong suspicion the name change was done under US influence, hence the real name being restored during WWII when the Americans were away, and "Thailand" being reimposed after they came back. 
I'd like to add that whatever the name, Thailand is a lovely country.


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## Pivra

The name Siam is too "Centralistic" for other people such as the northerners who call their region Lanna and the northeasterners who call their region and the language of central Thailand was refered to as Siamese, by changing the name to and stop using the word Siam the people feel more united since all of us are Taic group.


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## BehindtheDoor

"Siam" means "Peninsula" in Thai language. I don't know what, but I suppose that the original "Siam" was probably the Kra istmus.


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## cuchuflete

Qcumber said:


> To me "The Kingdom of Siam" sounds better than "Thailand".


  That's a valid, individual, personal opinion about how a translated name sounds in English.




> I have the strong suspicion the name change was done under US influence, hence the real name being restored during WWII when the Americans were away, and "Thailand" being reimposed after they came back.


Have you any facts to support this assertion, or is it just an unfounded opinion?  Can you document other national name changes supposedly imposed by foreign powers in the post-colonial world?

Remember Serendip?  It later became Ceylon, and later still, Sri Lanka.  Were those name changes imposed? By whom?

I would be quite interested to learn what possible US self-interest might have been served by changing another country's name.


US influence in Indochina was minimal before and during WWII.  The major colonial powers in that part of the world before the war were France and England.


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## konungursvia

But I thought the Yanks were the home of the free?


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## cuchuflete

No, Konungursvia, you have confused them with the Canadians.

The Yanks are at home in a stadium in The Bronx.  I believe that place name was imposed by Dutch colonialists.


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## konungursvia

Japan forced Corea to change its spelling to Korea during its occupation of that country, in order to be before the Koreans at the Olympic parades and at the UN, which used to be called something like "council of nations".


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## cuchuflete

The UN didn't exist until after the Japanese occupation ended.
You are lumping disparate organizations together, inaccurately.
It was the League of Nations, just in case you might be interested.

So tell me, please, what US interest might have been served by changing names of countries in what was, at the time, a region that was composed of French and English spheres of influence? Siam/Thailand was the only country to remain free of colonial control.  Siam and Thailand fall towards the end of the alphabet, so parade order doesn't seem a likely explanation.


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## Qcumber

Cuchuflete, why was the name *Siam* restored during the Japanese period? There must have been some deep symbolical reason.


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## cuchuflete

Qcumber said:


> Cuchuflete, why was the name *Siam* restored during the Japanese period? There must have been some deep symbolical reason.



Why don't you tell us what you mean by "the Japanese period".

You seem to have a very deep awareness about the entire topic, so please don't be shy. Share your historical facts. They might make a nice accompaniment to unsupported assertions and suppostions.  Who knows?  You may be correct.  So far, you have presented no evidence to persuade us that you are either right or wrong. 

I am not familiar with the history of the country, other than in very superficial terms.  I wonder if any Thai forero might tell us what caused the frequent name changes.


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## cuchuflete

Another opinion: 





> Apparently a twelfth-century Khmer inscription at Angkor Wat mentions _syam_, "dark brown people", said to be vassals of the Khmer king; they were probably settled around Sukhothai. The term quickly took hold in Europe as well, and _farang_ visitors who visited Ayuthaya in the seventeenth century referred to the kingdom as *Siam* (or Sayam), but also Ayuthaya (Ayutthaya, Ayuthiya, and lots of other variants), and reported that the inhabitants themselves called their country _Meuang Thai_, "Land of the Free". This was the convention drawn on when changing the name from *Siam* to *Thailand*.
> The *name change* was controversial, and some, like social critic Sulak Sivaraksa, still prefer *Siam*. For my part, I can see how "Land of the Free" has better connotations than "dark brown people". Also, the name *Thailand*, though an English translation, does have clear indigenous roots that the term *Siam* lacks. In any case, *Siam* became *Thailand*, and there the matter rests today.


source


I have no idea whether this source is accurate. The "social critic Sulak Sivaraksa" was born in 1933, and was a child when some of the name changes were made.


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## Qcumber

Cuchuflete, I'm certainly not going to challenge your source. I don't know so much as you think. My initial question to the Siamese forumite was a candid one.


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## cuchuflete

I certainly don't doubt that you were candid.  We have no personal argument.  You made an interesting statement:



> I have the strong suspicion the name change was done under US influence, hence the real name being restored during WWII when the Americans were away, and "Thailand" being reimposed after they came back.



I'm simply trying to discover if there is something to this, or at least some reason why you would assume that the US would have had any reason whatsoever to attempt to exert influence on Siam/Thailand to change its name.  It's quite possible that some such thing occured, but the US wasn't a presence in that part of the world until after the war ended, so "the Americans were away" before the Japanese attacked.
I am only asking you to explain why you came to what seems to me to be an odd conclusion.  The US has done some very strange things, some good ones and some bad ones.  I just have trouble connecting the dots on the proposition that the US gave a flying fig what that lovely country wanted to name itself.

Have we given this more trouble than it deserves?

cheers,
cuchu


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## Qcumber

Everybody knows that after WWII the US of A took control of almost the whole Pacific rim, and South-East Asia in particular.


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## cuchuflete

Excuse me, Qcumber, but you just don't have your facts at hand. Have a look at the history of the French in Vietnam.  It didn't end until long after the end of WWII.  US involvement came much later.  The Viet Minh fought the French for control of what was then a French colony, starting in 1946, and ending with French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.  The French left in 1954.  Large scale US involvement didn't begin until about a decade later.  Where Vietnam is concerned, the North was independent, and the US was not much of a presence until two decades after WWII ended. "...took control..." after WWII is a falsehood.

Laos was a French colony until 1949.  That is not US Control either.  After the French left, that country began a long civil war, and was out of control by both external and internal forces until the Pathet Lao took control in 1975.  

You just don't seem very interested in facts.  Throwing accusations may be a cheap and easy diversion, but it is not
any sort of valid interpretation of history.

By the way, ask your friends from New Zealand and Australia, Pacific Rim countries, if they were under US control.

Burma, now Myanmar, was a British colony after WWII.  Shall we accuse the British or the Americans or the little green men from Mars of forcing that name change?


PS- You still have given no reason, plausible or otherwise, to justify your apparently silly (nicest word I can think of for someone so indifferent to history) claim of US influence causing a name change.  You still haven't explained why "when the US was away" makes any sense at all [It doesn't!] when the US had had no prior presence.


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## cheshire

Pivra said:


> The name Siam is too "Centralistic" for other people such as the northerners who call their region Lanna and the northeasterners who call their region and the language of central Thailand was refered to as Siamese, by changing the name to and stop using the word Siam the people feel more united since all of us are Taic group.


You know Thai well! 
Thai's naming is just like how China got it's name 中国　zhonguo, instead of 漢 han. Don't you agree?


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## IxOhOxI

The name took place between Sukhothai era(1238-1438) - Ayutthaya era(1350-1767) and even until the early Rattanakosin era(1782-1932). We called the capital city as the name of our country. Right after King Rama III had made an agreement with the foreign countries, His Majesty then called Siam country 'Ayutthaya'

Later, King Rama VI had had more friendly relations with the western countries, the name of the capital as the name of the country was no longer used, Siam was titled from then on. King Rama VI's title in the oversees' documents was "REX Siamensis" which means "The King of Siam" and can be translated as "Siamin" or "Siamintaradhiraj"

The reason of the name changing from Siam to Thailand is that, the prime minister was entitled from the Viceroy's Council as the Prime minister of Siam. 4-5 months later, the Major-General Luang Wichitvathakhan traveled to Hanoy, Vietnam. He had seen the achaeology work of the Far East and France institutes. He took a map which the French institute had made, which meant there were many of Thai people living in the Indochinese Peninsula, the south of China in Burma and Asam in India, for instance. Therefore "The great Kingdom of Thailand" was advertised in order to gather Thais in other countries, in the same manner as Hitler who was doing in Europe, that is to gather germans in foreign countries to enter Germany. In May 11, 1949, it had been revised and added also in the constitution that, Siam had changed to Thailand.

"SYAMA" is pronounced exactly the same as the Thai context 'ศยามะ', means black, dark color, dark brown, dark green, etc. Some say "Siam" is derived from Chinese Teochiu 'Siamlor' or Chinese Mandarin 'Sianlow' likewise, the europeans also called and wrote the name of this country 'Siam' since the end of 15CE, they called it 'Siam' like the southern indians, srilankans, and malaysians had called as well.


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## palomnik

IxOhOxI said:


> "SYAMA" is pronounced exactly the same as the Thai context 'ศยามะ', means black, dark color, dark brown, dark green, etc. Some say "Siam" is derived from Chinese Teochiu 'Siamlor' or Chinese Mandarin 'Sianlow' likewise, the europeans also called and wrote the name of this country 'Siam' since the end of 15CE, they called it 'Siam' like the southern indians, srilankans, and malaysians had called as well.


 
I had also heard of the Chinese derivation of this; at one time the country was called Xī àn in Chinese, which means something like the "Pacified West." It's called tài guó in modern Chinese.

If it sounds strange that a Far Eastern Country should take a Chinese name, consider that Nihon (Japan) and Vietnam are both Chinese names originally.


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## avok

So Siamese twins are actually Thai just like Siamese cats !!! I dont know why but I've always found the name "siamese" mysterious.


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