Hello all.

my wife is having some difficulty translating our newborn daughters name into thai for her new passport,

Her name is meghan but the pronunciation is somewhere in between megan and megun.Could you please shed some light on this.

Thanks

This type of discussion is usually the beginning of 10 different suggestions because we all have different ideas about how the name is/should be pronounced in the first place.

I also understand that the second vowel sound may be the hardest to represent. This is simplified, but to explain my point: Thai applies more equal vowel weight to syllables than English.

English words which have a reduced vowel (schwa) in the second syllable due to stress on the first syllable will usually sound quite different when adopted into Thai. This is because Thai does not have a strategy for representing the (schwa) [or perhaps one could say it is not compatible with the tone system?].

And also probably because broadly speaking, American English has more even vowel distribution than British English - and finally, because Thai has developed a convention of applying a falling tone to the final syllable of multisyllabic foreign words.

I think I would suggest เม็กกัน but I think a Thai might be more likely to transcribe as เมกัน [EDIT: Please scrap that last assumption, actually เมกัน seems to be used as a shorthand of 'American'].

Either way, the final syllable will not have the same unstressed schwa quality.

You could also try เม็กเก็น which gives two identical short 'e' type vowel sounds... but that will sound a bit, I don't know, South African?

Somebody is bound to take issue with this, so please feel free to rip away at my arguments.

Try this one.

เมย์แกน

Cheers,

Soundman.

I think เมแกน is a more common spelling.

Many thanks for your excellent replies.

My wife writes it like this เมกันย์... could this also be correct เมกันย์

well, there's actually no "right" or "wrong" when it comes to giving a name..

however, i've never seen it spelled that way before, and if you google it you'll find there are 505 results (with most of the results being "เม" and "กันย์" separately, and the ones that are เมกันย์ are the Thai forms of the English-named companies), as opposed to "เมแกน" which is the widely accepted form (with 4,980 results, mostly on Megan Fox)

while no spelling is "incorrect", and "กันย์" is a common ending to a name (and is the "Virgo" sun sign) i think you will confuse Thais with the unusual spelling and unless you spell it out to them they'll write it "เมแกน"

I think เมแกน is a more common spelling.

That spelling was also suggested independently by my 'main informant'. Please disregard my other suggestions above, now that I've thought about it I agree the แกน ending is a better choice.

Hello all

I'm wantting to get a tatoo of my wife's name in Thai. Can anyone give the proper lettering ( big enough for transfer)?

Her nameis : Siripa :

Thanks in advance

Deesurin

Hello all

I'm wantting to get a tatoo of my wife's name in Thai. Can anyone give the proper lettering ( big enough for transfer)?

Her nameis : Siripa :

Thanks in advance

Deesurin

Not 100% sure.

Could be:

สิริภา or ศิริภา

Why don't you ask your wife first or one of her friends if you are going to surprise her? Wouldn't want to get the spelling wrong now....

Cheers,

Soundman.