Can A Thai Change Their Last Name?

[RogerSterling1]

just curious if Thais are allowed to add syllables to their surnames at their own will like Americans are free to do?

[bkkmick]

Got nobody to talk to 'roger'?

[RogerSterling1]

only you, apparently. how about a back rub?

Edited October 11, 2009 by RogerSterling1

[bina]

yes, thais change their names no problem. it was the thing to do to get a new passport , new name and therefore new work visa, until airports started doing fingerprint of foreign workers. have the thais i know have the same nick name but new first and last names. their 'long' names dont seem to mean much to them or their familiies as far as sentiments are concerned (named after father , mother, long lost uncle -- they dont seem to do that sort of thing. the m onks more or less help decide on names. ) thais also change names to change their luck in lottery, or in life. again, the monks help make the change.

bina

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Right; not only CAN they change a last name, it's also surprisingly common.

[nam-thip]

My misses recently purchased a book to look up Thai names that will bring her some sort of ‘good luck’.

She told me she doesn’t like her first name but the three names she was interested in sounded every bit as bad and one had the word PORN stuck in the middle but to her the word porn meant nothing.

I asked her why she wanted to change her name and the impression I got was that like everything else in Thailand changing your name is attached to new found ‘good luck’ and when you ask a Thai to explain what ‘good luck’ means top of the list always seems to be……………..“Money come”.

Next time she’s back ‘up jungle’ in her home city she intends to go to the relevant office to change the name her family gave her.

Hope it doesn’t contain the word PORN!!

Next in-line for a name change is her daughter.

I'm convinced that Westerners and Thai's are from different planets....................na-noo na-noo

I lost interest as none of it made any sense to me.

[dave111223]

My wife's friends whole family just changed their last name to something roughly translated to "Super rich, lots of gold, very lucky and powerful"

[mca]

My next door neighbour changes her first name about every 6 months it seems. I still can't remember what the current one is.

[PeaceBlondie]

Yes, Roger.

[bina]

I'm convinced that Westerners and Thai's are from different planets

...................

.israelis change their names after consulting with rabbies, to improve luck, prevent illness, or if they survived a catastrophe in which case they add the name 'chaim' (life) to the name they ahve. we even have something called geometria which is related to the kabala (like madonna likes) in which the rabbi tells u that if u add up all the letters in your (hebrew) name, the sum of the letters (each letter represents a number) it means illness, or death, or whatever/

so u have to change or add letters to it... also, names are given at birth based on parentage, living or dead, or sets of names (all the kids are named after flowers, or in the case of my kids, land sky and water), so if someone changes their name for no really good reason, the whole family will be offended.

thais do not have that problem.

my husband doesnt like his first name- he claims its a female name, so he dropped the ng sound , and his name became a different more male name altogether . he never changed it officially however so when he gives his name here, it always causes problems compared to what is written on his id card and passport. the israelis here would prefer to change it to a more pronouncable hebrew name anyhow.

a rose is a rose....

bina

israel

[seasider]

My misses recently purchased a book to look up Thai names that will bring her some sort of ‘good luck’.

She told me she doesn’t like her first name but the three names she was interested in sounded every bit as bad and one had the word PORN stuck in the middle but to her the word porn meant nothing.

I asked her why she wanted to change her name and the impression I got was that like everything else in Thailand changing your name is attached to new found ‘good luck’ and when you ask a Thai to explain what ‘good luck’ means top of the list always seems to be……………..“Money come”.

Next time she’s back ‘up jungle’ in her home city she intends to go to the relevant office to change the name her family gave her.

Hope it doesn’t contain the word PORN!!

Next in-line for a name change is her daughter.

I'm convinced that Westerners and Thai's are from different planets....................na-noo na-noo

I lost interest as none of it made any sense to me.

Seems to be a similar thread on Thais changing there name upon marriage.

Anyway, my ex-wife changed her name as the ink was still drying on the divorce papers.

As in your case, she insists it was just for 'good luck'. She used a website that tells you if a first name and surname are compatible and will bring her good luck in the future. After trying different combinations she decided on keeping her original first name together with her mothers maiden name as a lucky combination,as decided by the website .

Unless anyone has any other suggestions as to why she would change her surname,now different to the surname of her children. I thought maybe the 'stigma' of having a western name in Thailand,but she insists thats not the reason.

As Nam-Tip said, i quickly lost interest but i did find it a little bit strange and disrespectful that my family name and the name of her children meant so little to her.

Different name, same person(inside and out). Here was i thinking you get out of life what you put into it.

Rather pathetic really.

[isanbirder]

It is very common for hilltribe people to change their names so that people don't know they come from a hilltribe (generally looked down on by Thais). The surnames they get come from a list available at the amphur office... and generally mean things like "protector of the forest". They don't sound Thai at all! One Lisu boy I know changed both his names because he said his father's name was too well-known to the police! Good reason, I suppose.

Many Karen from the north-west don't have surnames, and have to acquire them to join the mainstream. I once took a Karen boy to see a doctor, who very nearly refused to treat him because he said he couldn't record him properly in his records!

Most Thai (as opposed to hilltribe) name-changes are to improve one's luck... irritating if they're listed in a database, and suddenly turn up under a different name!

[oevna]

... to her the word porn meant nothing.

Actually, to her, the word Porn (pronounced more like "Pawn," as in the chess piece) means "blessing" when spelled พร in Thai, and it appears in many names (and even alone as a nickname). Unfortunate Roman transliteration, I know, but there you go.

Come to think of it, given that Thai syllables starting with a "P" sound are usually transliterated with a "PH" (per the RTGS), I wonder why they didn't spell it "Phorn." I know it would get mispronounced "Forn" by us English-speakers, but that doesn't seem to stop them with "Phuket" (which sounds more like "Poo-get" in Thai) and most other "P" words.