Bangkok set for official change of name to "Krung Thep Maha Nakhon"

[ikke1959]

What people all not do to make costs and with that earn money because a lot of paper and stamps have to change now... and as always.. some teamoney will be involved

[Thaifly88]

Is this serious ? My calendar doesn't say 1 April. 

[StayinThailand2much]

2 hours ago, PremiumLane said:

How will this effect tourism?

Imagine, you just heard the song "One Night in Bangkok" on the car radio... Inspired, you decide on your first trip to Bangkok. You search online for a flight to, and hotels in Bangkok, but all you can find is 'Krungthep Maha whatsoever...' Then you see offers in Manila and Bali; you heard of these exotic places too, and book there...

 

For me, 'Mumbai' just doesn't inspire the same wanderlust as 'Bombay'. And 'Persia' also sounds more inviting than 'Iran'... And while Vietnamese more and more call 'Ho Chi Minh City' by its former name, the Thais go backwards to a less wordly name. Just imagine New Yorkers renamed their city 'New Amsterdam'...

[vandeventer]

2 hours ago, wasabi said:

Might help their pride but I can't see this helping tourism.

Everyone will still call it Bangkok, Remember the song 1 night in Bangkok, singing 1 night in Krung Thep doesn't sound good. besides why would they change it?

[RubbaJohnny]

14 minutes ago, lemonjelly said:

Wouldn’t that be a “D”?

Or GY in Hungarian !

[vandeventer]

1 minute ago, StayinThailand2much said:

Imagine, you just heard the song "One Night in Bangkok" on the radio... Inspired, you decide on your first trip to Bangkok. You search for a flight to and hotels in Bangkok, but all you can find is 'Krunthep Maha whatsoever...' Then you see offers in Manila and Bali; you heard of these exotic places too, and book there...

Sorry, Great minds think alike!

[RubbaJohnny]

Perhaps as gurdians of morals its less kok and and more Khon!

[hkt83100]

3 hours ago, happysoul said:

What about the IATA code (BKK)... KTM is already taken by Kathmandu airport ????

No problem, Ho Chi Minh City is still known as SGN by IATA.

[robert888d]

What a waste of time and money.

 

[IamNoone88]

Oddly, I have always preferred Krung Thep to Bangkok as a name. I remember many years a go someone telling me they came from Krung Thep. I had no idea at the time where it was ......

[Jimbo2014]

Krung Thep Maha Nakhon - So its being called "Gods city, the big city".   OK I can go with Krung Thep but why bother with Maha Nakhon?  Anyway... it will always be "Bangers" to me.

[StayinThailand2much]

2 hours ago, trainman34014 said:

Don't laugh; i've heard similar things said in many country's when people ask me where i live !    Another view you get when in Singapore or Malaysia,Taiwan etc is  ''Ah yes; Thailand, the Lunatic Asylum of South East Asia'' !

'Bangkok' has a certain image in my country, yes. But what will change? - If people ask me where I live now, and I tell them 'Krung Thep Maha... (nevermind)', they will just ask me 'Where is that?', cause no-one will know. So, I'll have to tell them: "It was formerly known as 'Bangkok', which will only extend the conversation about this place and its image...

 

And as for the 'Lunatic Asylum'; every time I travel to Laos, and the receptionist at the hotel asks me where I'm arriving from, the conversation goes like:

 

Me: "From Thailand..."

 

Receptionist: "Oh, Thailand? Thailand has many problems."

 

Me: "You bet."

[KhunLA]

44 minutes ago, clivebaxter said:

Bring back serfdom, another step back into the past. ????

Didn't know they abolished it, as most of the land in Thailand is NOT (red) chanoted.

[coops]

2 hours ago, lemonjelly said:

Krung Tep would be a closer transliteration. The Thai obsession with the letter “H” is weird 

The transliteration 'Thep' is the correct one....

 

The typical transliteration systems all use the 'h' to denote a hard consonant - so 'ph' is a hard p sound as in 'paste' or indeed Phuket. And also 'kh' is the transliteration for a hard 'k' sound like the C in 'cake' - whereas 'k' on its own is a 'g' sound like the g in 'game' - and that does mean Phuket is properly pronounced with a 'g' sound not the wrong hard k sound... mind you it would be better transliterated as Phuuket to indicate the long initial vowel sound.

And similarly, 'th' is a hard t sound like t in 'taste'.

 

Transliteration systems all have to deal with the problem of the Western alphabet only having 26 symbols... whereas Thai has many, many as it is phonetic.

 

 

[rudi49jr]

Just changing the name? They’d better change location too and move it to higher ground, because most of it will be under water in about 50 years. Indonesia is moving its capital to Kalimantan because Jakarta is sinking at an alarming rate.

[StayinThailand2much]

12 minutes ago, coops said:

Transliteration systems all have to deal with the problem of the Western alphabet only having 26 symbols... whereas Thai has many, many as it is phonetic.

And the Thais didn't make it easier for themselves, and others, randomly using English and French transliterations, with the effect that many place names in Thailand are spelled in half a dozen (or so) different ways.

[metisdead]

A post with an inflammatory comment toward another member has been removed.

[toofarnorth]

1 hour ago, TheScience said:

Ironically the Thais still call Bejing - Peking.

My wife still calls Myanmar Burma.  Makes sense ' Oh he speaks Burmese he also speaks Myanmarese '.

Saying that Americans speak English .

[NeoDinosaw]

3 hours ago, wasabi said:

Might help their pride but I can't see this helping tourism.

I thought the name had always been Krung Thep   for Thai people and  Bangkok for foreigner 'cos of a mistake made byt the French

[newnative]

In other news, Coca Cola announced today that it is changing its name to Brown Carbonated Drink That Refreshes.  Catchy, n'est pas?  Seriously, the absolute dumbest idea to come down the pike.  I thought my Thai partner was joking when he told me. 

[Antiparovian]

3 hours ago, lemonjelly said:

Krung Tep would be a closer transliteration. The Thai obsession with the letter “H” is weird 

Actually Grung Tape in mor accurated. ก is closer to the English G and certainly is not a K.

[TheScience]

6 minutes ago, toofarnorth said:

My wife still calls Myanmar Burma.  Makes sense ' Oh he speaks Burmese he also speaks Myanmarese '.

Saying that Americans speak English .

They all do...Pah-ma.

 

But tbh the Myanmarese (?) Call it Myanmar as well.

 

Burmese is the predominant language. Dozens more.

 

The American insistence to call it Burma is just stupid. The name was changed decades ago. There are dozens of ethnicities the nation hardly just belongs to the Burmese.

[bougnat]

Is there anything more urgent? They should wait until 2050, with the rising waters they will be able to call it ATLANTIDE bis.

[Pravda]

45 minutes ago, StayinThailand2much said:

Imagine, you just heard the song "One Night in Bangkok" on the car radio... Inspired, you decide on your first trip to Bangkok. You search online for a flight to, and hotels in Bangkok, but all you can find is 'Krungthep Maha whatsoever...' Then you see offers in Manila and Bali; you heard of these exotic places too, and book there...

 

For me, 'Mumbai' just doesn't inspire the same wanderlust as 'Bombay'. And 'Persia' also sounds more inviting than 'Iran'... And while Vietnamese more and more call 'Ho Chi Minh City' by its former name, the Thais go backwards to a less wordly name. Just imagine New Yorkers renamed their city 'New Amsterdam'...

 

Exactly.

 

 

[TheScience]

56 minutes ago, yogi yogi said:

whatever.  every westerner calls airport swampy.  bangkok will always be bangkok to foriegner

No. Only the ones too constipated to learn to say Suvarnabhumi call it sWaMpee.

[Chelseafan]

3 hours ago, Thailand said:

"One night in Krung Thep Maha Nakhon"

 

Not quite the same now?

 

 

 

Or "What happens in Krung Thep Maha Nakhon stays in Krung Thep Maha Nakhon..." .

[hotchilli]

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Krung Thep Maha Nakhon will be the official English spelling from now on.

I hope they extend all the necessary spaces on auto-fill boxes and any relevant documents that require a full address.

It's almost impossible now to fill some out correctly

 

[Guderian]

This'll confuse the sex tourists who think that Bangkok is very appropriately named, lol.

[chilli42]

4 hours ago, webfact said:

request from the Royal Academy

Well at least we know the source of the brilliant idea.

[StayinThailand2much]

On a side-note, are those arrival cards still required where you (had to) write your hotel and address into a small space? I used to write 'BKK' at the end of the address I was staying at. - How am I supposed to squeeze 'Krung Thep Maha Nakhon' into the small space after the hotel address, or will the size of the forms change to A4?