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Short answer: Loei.

Long and boring answer: The "official" Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) would use Loei because, indeed, RTGS is used on all place names. There's no single transliteration system of Thai script that should be considered "correct". Many systems have been developed, especially because the RTGS is almost useless for working out how to actually pronounce words for non-Thai-speakers. For example, It does not show tone marks or vowel length, and merges several phonemes eg. initial consonants จ vs. ฉ, ช, ฌ are all rendered as "ch" even though จ is "j".

An example of a different rendering of สุดยอดไปเลย would be sùt-yɔ̂ɔt bpai ləəi using the Paiboon system that's used by the popular book "Thai for Beginners". The advantage of Paiboon vs. RTGS is that it is more accurate (unambiguous, can reconstruct the Thai script from it). The disadvantage is it uses funny characters outside the latin alphabet.

Hi folks. I'm not getting a tattoo done (I find after 48 years that I don't have to write it down any more to remember it [but am aware that that may change!!!! lol]), but I am now living in Thailand and am working on learning the language so I figure being able to write my name in Thai would be pretty handy.Mike ArmstrongMy Thai teacher reckons the Mike is ไมค์ but I am having difficulty understanding this as I thought that the gaa-ran symbol meant that the 'k' sound is silent, but of course when you say "mike", there is a slight, but distinct 'k' sound at the end of it.I have had a go at doing my surname: อัรมสทรงAny help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

อาร์มสตรอง

Thank you Yogi (I'm not going to call you lazy, because you helped me ) :jap:

mai bpen-rai.

Also, my wife agrees that ไมค์ is correct. But like you, I can't figure out why.

I can think of two related reasons, but I'm only guessing:

1) The "ai" vowels (sara ai mai malai and sara ai mai muan) are never followed by a final consonant in a syllable in Thai. Normally in this case, they will add the 'gaa-ran symbol' to avoid such "illegal" letter combinations.

2) When one says Mike in English, the k sound at the end is clearly aspirated (you release air afterwards). Thai final consonants are never aspirated, so it would probably sound closer to "mai" than "mike" anyway. There's no way to make the aspirated k in Mike in Thai.