Farang Persons Name In Thai Script

[Lauriedog123]

How do Thais work out what Thai characters to use for a farang name?

For instance, how would my name (DAVID HOWDEN) be written in Thai, and how would that have been arrived at?

[PhilHarries]

I think I can answer the first bit. The transcription of farang names into Thai script is only like a reverse version of the phonetic transliterations of Thai words like Suvarnabhumi. Thais can thus pronounce your name using the sounds produced by the characters. Apart from making a sound like your name it has no relevance.

I might be wrong but that is my take on it.

As for the second part I can't help you as my PC has Korean script but the rather more fundamental reason is that I can't read nor write Thai.

[Fore Man]

How do Thais work out what Thai characters to use for a farang name?

For instance, how would my name (DAVID HOWDEN) be written in Thai, and how would that have been arrived at?

Try this: เดวิด หาวแดน I am no expert though and this needs to be edited by a better-trained writer of Thai. There may be necessary tone marks that I missed. To understand how it was arrived at, you need to take a lesson or two in reading Thai characters and tone marks. For a good start look at: http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/thindex.htm

Edited March 31, 2009 by Fore Man

[phaethon]

How do Thais work out what Thai characters to use for a farang name?

For instance, how would my name (DAVID HOWDEN) be written in Thai, and how would that have been arrived at?

Try this: เดวิด หาวแดน I am no expert though and this needs to be edited by a better-trained writer of Thai. There may be necessary tone marks that I missed. To understand how it was arrived at, you need to take a lesson or two in reading Thai characters and tone marks. For a good start look at: http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/thai/thindex.htm

There is also the risk that you might inadvertently include something hilarious or obscene or both that will have Thais rolling in the aisles when they see it.

Best to get it checked out by a native speaker before you hand over the dosh to the tattoo artist. .

[nidge]

The correct spelling is เดวิด ฮาวเดนท์ although what Fore Man wrote still says basically the same thing.

I don't think the spelling is so important anyway. I have 2 thai bank accounts and they both have different spellings of my surname.

[Mosha]

I can't agree on the phoenetics. AFAIK Thai does not have a ST sound as in eg Stephen. Most of the time I hear Sadteven when my fulll name is used. Although mostly my Thai family shorten my name Thai style to the last syllable, and I get callled Ven.

[Rikker]

I'd suggest เดวิด ฮาวเดน, I'm guessing nidge you included a silent T (ท์) to make it clear it's a foreign name, but that's not really necessary.

Foreign names are most often written without tone marks, even though the pronunciation will differ from the spelling. Most Thais would look เดวิด ฮาวเดน, recognize it as a foreigner's name, and proceed to pronounce the last name as [ฮาวเด้น], as a matter of course.

As for how the spelling is arrived at, it's simple: Thai is mostly phonetic, and so the name is simply sounded out and written in the simplest way possible. The reason ฮ is used instead of ห for the letter H, as Fore Man suggested, is that ห would give it a strange tone for a foreign word. While not strictly "important", there are established rules for this, and most Thais have internalized them as part of being literate native speakers of the language.

[Rionoir]

I don't understand putting ท์ at the end at all... in class when they were sort of teaching us how to translate foreign names to thai they only used silent characters such as that to indicate the foreign word has a sound at the end which cannot be written in thai. For example if the name ends in and R sound, you would put ร์ at the end, so that Thai don't pronounce your name with an N sound at the end... but you needn't add silent characters unless they are in the original word. Perhaps เฮาเด็น is a little more natural sounding?

[PhilHarries]

I can't agree on the phoenetics. AFAIK Thai does not have a ST sound as in eg Stephen. Most of the time I hear Sadteven when my fulll name is used. Although mostly my Thai family shorten my name Thai style to the last syllable, and I get callled Ven.

Funnily enough all the Steves I've known have been called Stebe or Satebe as, again AFAIK, there is no V sound in Thai. Even university educated, fluent English speaking, Thais would pronounce vendor as wendor (don't ask me why it's not bendor). But you are right about the ST, a lot of Thais put the 'a' in between them and 's' followed by other consonants as in saport.

[Rikker]

I've occasionally seen a silent letter added "erroneously" on purpose to a foreign name to set it apart as foreign. For example, the surname Young spelled ยังก์, to distinguish it from the word ยัง in Thai. (Without it you might have ambiguities like: โจ ยัง ไม่ได้กลับบ้าน "Joe Young didn't come home" vs. โจ ยังไม่ได้กลับบ้าน "Joe hasn't come home yet"). There is no official policy for this, but a stylistic touch to improve readability that some translators would do.

I agree that it isn't really necessary here, though.

As for ฮาวเดน vs. เฮาเด็น, again, most Thais are going to read this with a falling tone on the last syllable regardless, as part of the Thai "accent" for pronouncing foreign words and names. In that case it is phonetically shortened automatically. Thai is not always read strictly according to the writing, and foreign words and names are good examples of common exceptions. The popular aesthetic is to write the name/word as simply as possible, since will Thais "know how" to pronounce it without thinking about it anyway. Like the company Cadbury, which spells its name in Thai แคดเบอรี -- no tone marks or ไม้ไต่คู้ -- because the simplicity is considered visually attractive. But in actuality, it's pronounced [แค็ด-เบอ-รี่], and never strictly as it is written.

I think either ฮาว or เฮา are okay for the first syllable, though, except that เฮา is a relatively common dialect word (i.e. Isan for เรา), and perhaps more prone to confusion than ฮาว, which is only used in foreign-borrowed phrases like โนว์ฮาว ("know-how") or ฮาวทู ("how-to").