I was attempting to spell a word out the missus as I was unsure of the pronunciation and for the life of me I could not remember the name of ไ sara ai maai malai. I knew the face but the name escaped me.

Thinking of an easy way to remember the names of the vowels, tones and signs I started to wonder how they got their names in the first place.

Ok, maai aehk, maai thoh, maai dtree and maai jat dta waa were easy enough being numbers 1 to 4 in the old calender.

The short sign or 'high sign' ็ maai dtai khu I'm assuming is from ไต่ to climb; to scale and คู้, to curl up, reflecting it's shape? Possible.

Sara ai maai muaan ใไม้ม้วน from the way the top of the vowel rolls over, from ม้วน, to roll; to wind. Pretty obvious.

The repeat sign ไม้ยมก maai ya mohk from ยมก, meaning double. So far so good.

ไ ไม้มลาย maai ma laa, to break down; split; ruin; be ruined. Is it because of the shape at the top sort of petering out? I'm clutching at straws now.

But this one's got me. -ั mai han akat ไม้หันอากาศ, a stick turning in the air. Perhaps they had run out of ideas when they got to this one, although I suppose it does look a little like a boomerang when you think about it. Did they have boomerangs in the old days or does this go back to when the language (and Australia's indiginous people) migrated from Asia?

Any thoughts?

One definition of มลาย that the Royal Institute Dictionary gives is แตก, which I think must be the reason for the name. The tail of the letter is "broken". แตก is used to describe letters like ฃ ฅ ฆ ซ ต ฒ with the notch in the top, so I think this is a fair assumption.

As for ไม้หันอากาศ, ไม้ should be understood as simply "marker" or "symbol". I'm not sure why หัน is used, but in the past, before the advent of the symbol ไม้หันอากาศ, this vowel was written by doubling the following consonant. For example, starting with the oldest Thai writings (stone inscriptions), ฟงง is Old Thai for ฟัง. The double ง indicates the /a/ vowel. This type of doubled consonant is called หัน. For example งง would be called ง หัน. The only remnant of this is ร หัน, which is the name for the double ร seen in words like บรรยากาศ or กรรม.

So even though I don't know why it's called หัน off the top of my head (I'll look into it), that's where the หัน part must come from. Maybe the อากาศ part is related to the fact that it floats in the "air" above the consonant? Shrug. I've wondered this before, but never found an answer. (Not that I really looked, either.)

หัน also means to rotate (or to turn your head).

The letter looks like rotating wind/air.

Thai people always told me that was the explanation for the name of this letter.

Another name for this vowel is ไม้ผัด or หางกังหัน

The last word means: turbine with a tail and that's how it looks like

Edited August 16, 200916 yr by kriswillems