Help Me To Write These English Names In Thai Please!

[koratvinnie]

I've got some basic Thai reading and writing skills but can someone with much more proficiency than me help me to correct these translations? I've had a bash but I'm sure they're in need of correction.

Jamie = เจมี

Lucy = ลูซี

Harry = แฮรี

Noah = โนอา

[bhoydy]

I think your translations are fine. There are other ways to spell them but yours work fine. I think the most important thing to know is that they sound the way you want people to say them. For example, i would spell Harry - ฮารี or ฮารี่. That's because that's how we prounounce that name where i'm from.

[AjarnPasa]

I agree that they all seem perfectly acceptable transcripts. But like bhoydy I would add a caveat toแฮรี as to my southern English ear it sounds a bit too much like 'hairy'. Though the similar แฮร์รี่ is used for Harry Potter which is presumably therefore the accepted transcription in Thailand.

Edited September 6, 2010 by AjarnPasa

[Rikker]

To get an authentic transcription, let's take a look at how Thais write the names of well-known persons with these same names:

Jamie = เจมี or เจมี่ (tone mark optional but probably more common; note that even the Thai Wikipedia article for Jamie Foxx uses both spellings in the same page)

Lucy = ลูซี่ (see e.g. this page on Lucy Liu)

Harry = แฮร์รี่ or แฮร์รี (these spellings are the most widely used and recognized, because of two people: Harry Potter and Prince Harry. Side note to AjarnPasa: As it happens in my dialect of English 'hairy' and 'Harry' are homophones, which I pronounce more like 'herry', but so it goes.)

Noah = โนอาห์ (used in the Thai bible; and while there aren't many Thai Christians the story of Noah's Ark is still relatively well-known)

While exactly how the names are pronounced in English differs from dialect to dialect, I think it's probably best to spell common names in a way Thais expect them to be spelled. But then again it annoys me that Thais conventionally spell 'Robert' as โรเบิร์ต, pronounced Row-bert. So do what you like!

[koratvinnie]

Thanks for your help. I did better than I thought I would! I've only learnt to read Thai by observation (looking at the destinations on the sides of buses, road signs, newspapers etc) so I still have a lot to learn.

Thanks again.

Edited September 7, 2010 by koratvinnie