My Chinese Name Written In Thai? Formally, How Does That Work?

[OldChinaHam]

I am wondering ---

How does one properly write and speak a Chinese name in Thai?

For example, Chinese names usually have one surname character and two given name characters, There are also many Chinese names which have a total of two characters. Then there are the Chinese surnames which are composed of a double character pair, plus one or two characters for the given name, to make a name with four characters.

I have been able to find how to write Chinese characters using Vietnamese transliteration, but what about the proper way to write Chinese names in Thai? Bill or Bob are easy. So where do I find a list of Chinese names converted into Thai?

Hope someone can provide some input, it is just not right to walk around here nameless.

Thank you,

Unnamed Yet

[bytebuster]

Thais usually use a single nickname to identify a person.

Often, Chinese names are transcribed literally, e.g. 成龙 is เฉินหลง [tɕʰɤ̌n lǒŋ]. You may notice some tonal misconception, but this is the way how the things work.

However, many Thais also understand Romanized names, e.g. แจ็กกี้ชาน [tɕɛ̀k kîː tɕʰaːn].

My suggestion:

* For formal conversations (business), use your last+first names and ask some Thai speaker to write it down for you.

* For colloquial speech, pick a 1- or 2-syllable nickname (it can be your last or first name) and learn how it is written.

In both cases, pick a nickname so it contained only those phonemes Thais are familiar with, this way you avoid other people mispronouncing it. I've seen someone with name 高牛 which was transcribed to Thai as เก่าเหนียว which sounds odd to a Thai speaker.

[Mole]

Colloquially, a Chinese name is just transliterated to Thai according to how it's pronounced in Chinese. So Chen Shui-bian would be เฉินสุยเปี่ยน. Note there are no spaces in between.

Thai is not the same as Vietnamese where each Chinese character has a Vietnamese pronunciation and usually also have the same meaning as in Chinese.

Thai people like to put khun คุณ before a name same way Chinese likes to use ah 阿

So if your name was Chen Shui-bian you could let them call you khun Shui-bian. In case your Chinese name is very difficult for a Thai to pronounce or is unfortunate to sound like something impolite in Thai, you could also let them call you khun Chen or just one of your names such as khun Shui or khun Bian.

Note that khun is for other people to call you. You never refer to yourself as khun Shui-bian, but just Shui-bian.

In official documents Chinese surnames is always written as แซ่

For example, Chen 陳 would be แซ่เฉิน

But often, names are written with Taochew pronunciation which can be quite different from Mandarin. For example, Chen would be Tan (pronounced Tang) ตั้ง

In official Thai documents, a Chinese name would be written according to whatever Chinese dialect the user usually calls his name in, then his surname.

For example Chen Shui-bian would be written as สุยเปี่ยน แซ่เฉิน in formal documents such as driving license etc.

[OldChinaHam]

Thank you for the input. I think I am beginning to understand.

However, when I use pinyin as a romanization tool to represent Chinese characters pronounced in Mandarin, then there is only one way to write each Chinese character in PinYin, depending on its usage and pronunciation. I'm not talking about DaiFu.

I was wondering if there is some analogous accepted way to write each character in Thai, phonetically, where each Chinese surname character in Mandarin is always written, phonetically, using the same Thai letters (characters) of the Thai alphabet. Or, is this always a problem because, as you say, with different dialects having different pronunciation, the Thai writing of the names will sometimes be different, just as with Wong and Wang in English. Still, Wang is the only accepted PinYin form.

When I plug in เฉินหลง or เฉินสุยเปี่ยน into Google Translation tool, the pronunciation of the Thai sounds pretty good, including the tones are almost the same as in Mandarin.

But is there also a dictionary, on line, or which can be bought, which would be helpful if one wished to look up a Chinese surname, pronounced in Mandarin,and know exactly how it should be written phonetically in Thai?

Maybe all that is needed is a Chinese-Thai dictionary?

I find it very interesting that in Thai the Chinese surnames are no longer represented, whereas in English we always see Wang, Bai, and all the 100 Chinese surnames.

What might be the best resource to use for writing of Mandarin Chinese characters in Thai?

I am sure that 阿Bian is not in a position to tell me at the moment.

Thank you.

[Mole]

https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B8%9E%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%99

Wikipedia a conversion table which can convert all the pinyin sounds to a corresponding Thai character.

There are many sounds in Mandarin which does not exist in Thai. Also neutral Mandarin tone does not exist in Thai, so the neutral tone in Thai would usually be used instead, but it does not quite sound the same as in Mandarin. The other 3 tones is more or less same as in Thai.

pā pá pǎ pà

ปา ป๋า ป่า ป้า

The problematic is the B and D in pinyin which if one follows English transliteration would be transcribed as บ and ด (these two sounds does not exist in Mandarin) but according to pinyin it should be transcribed as ป and ต.

Also sh and x would be pronounced as ซ or ส (s) because the sh and x sounds does not exist in Thai.

r would normally be pronounced as ย such as 人 เหยิน

Some words may need to include ห at the beginning, but this is only in order to get the correct tone. Such as in เหยิน you can not write as เยิ๋น

[OldChinaHam]

Mole, Thanks a lot for the Wikipedia Thai-Chinese chart.

It sounds as if you might be a Thai teacher, a Chinese language teacher, a scholar, or all three.

Using your advice, i just plugged in what the chart tells me should be the Thai representation of the pinyin "yu". But what I get from the chart seems to be อวี. This Thai character, however, has no similarity to the pinyin sound 'yu'. Maybe I am not using the chart correctly?

As I mentioned above, when you use the Thai character set to represent Chen ShuiBian, then the result is truly pretty close to the way the name is pronounced in Mandarin, although Chen's Mandarin pronunciation is 'ATROCIOUS', as everyone knows. When I try using the Wiki chart, I find that I am not getting the same good result.

I will keep fooling around with the wiki. And also I will keep looking for a faster way of converting Chinese surnames to the Thai alphabet.

There would not seem to be any need to often write Chinese characters using the Thai alphabet unless one was a Thai speaker who was learning the Chinese language and Chinese characters. The only need for easy writing of Chinese characters in Thai, for most people, would seem to be the Chinese surnames, or also perhaps other Chinese names. Although most English speakers still refer to the ChangJiang as the Yangtze, and in Thai, I also assume that ChangJiang may not sound much the same in Thai.

Again, thank you for your very helpful information.

[Mole]

Actually, I am none of that. I Just have some interest in this.

I was going to mention the tricky ü sound which does not exist in Thai which would usually be transcribed to อื.

However, for the special character y, remember that in pinyin if it comes before i and u, y is silent.

Also keep in mind that many words are written with u, but it's actually the ü sound and not oo.

For these words, you will simply have to memorize that u = อู while ü is อือ

So if it's written as lu or nu, you must determine yourself if it's lu/lü or nu/nü and use the correct Thai wovel accordingly.

you 有 is โหย่ว

yuan 元 is หยวน

yang 陽 is หยัง

while

yi 一 is อี

yu 魚 is อื๋อ

However, in your case, yu would be อือ then just use the appropriate tone mark, such as อื๋อ อื่อ อื้อ

[OldChinaHam]

As you say, it does not seem possible to approximate the Chinese Mandarin sound for 魚 in Thai.

But 尉 happens to be a Chinese surname with a Mandarin pronunciation that is represented by pinyin "yu".. This character is also represented by pinyin "wei", but not when occurring as part of a double-character surname.

As an aside, Mole, it would be interesting to see (for me anyway) how Thai speakers learn the sounds of the Chinese characters in Mandarin. I don't know if they use standard pinyin in their textbooks, or if they use the Thai character set at first, before they begin writing characters. Maybe they just use Zhuyinfuhao, or perhaps this system is not used outside Taiwan so much. Chinese language seems to be ever more popular around the world, in Thailand too.

[Mole]

If I remember correctly, they learn pinyin first. But they'll learn what each corresponding pinyin sound is to Thai character and start from there.

尉 would be pronounced like อื้อ in Thai. It's not really the same, but closest.

But I guess perhaps you should not worry too much that it may sound differently than Mandarin. Just think of it as if a Cantonese would have called your name, which would be Wei, so in "Thai" it would be called อื้อ, which fortunately doesn't have any particular meaning in Thai and all Thais can pronounce it.

[OldChinaHam]

It is good to know that อื้อ will not carry any negative meaning or connotation when used as a surname.

But this is only half of the surname now in question with which I am testing the wiki chart.

The first Chinese surname character I'm testing is 尉 or อื้อ

The second Chinese character is 遲, or I am guessing using the chart to be ช

The result seems a bit far off the mark.

In pinyin, 尉遲 is correctly written yuchi. The first character of this double-character surname is usually pronounce 'wei' in all other contexts. It only becomes 'yu' when used in this "shuangxing" double character surname.

Still, it seems as if there might be a better alternative to อื้อช than what I was able to come up with using the chart first time around.

And while hunting down the Chinese surnames written in Thai, I came across some year old news stating that the Thai government is thinking about importing 10,000 Chinese language instructors from China to teach Chinese in Thailand. 10,000 is a good round number and this would seem to be signalling a commitment to improve Chinese language skills in Thailand for the purpose of business and tourism.

When this happens, I would think it may become less unusual benefit from a tool or reference to quickly and accurately convert Chinese Mandarin surnames into written Thai.

The link to the 10,000 Chinese teacher story is here in EducationNews, a publication I have never heard of:

Thailand’s Education Ministry is attempting to enhance the country’s educational revolution and to achieve a goal ahead of the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) that Thai students will be able to speak both English and Chinese within 2015.

http://asia.educationnews.com/2012/06/26/thailand-requests-10000-teachers-from-china/

(Sorry. I have no way of knowing if this is the correct way to post a link.)

The wiki you provided is a good start but I think it could be improved in terms of ease of use for the casual user.

[Mole]

遲 would be written as ฉี

That wiki table is very confusing and not quite complete. In additional, the vowel table is even more confusing.