What is the meaning of the Thai word bahn

[RichardThailand]

I tried looking this up but could not find a good place that could explain it.

I notice that some restaurants use the word for example here:

Bahn Thai Restaurant

[uptheos]

Thai Restaurant at House

[tgeezer]

House = Bahn Thai restaurant.> Thai house restaurant.

[Seligne2]

บ้าน bâan n. home, domicile (home); door (house); hearth (home); house

[tgeezer]

Tried to edit.

"Bahn Thai" is a common name for Thai style houses: on stilts, wood, carved bits etc.

The logo will probably feature a Thai house.

[Seligne2]

Do you not know about this?: http://www.thai-language.com/dict

[KhunBENQ]

"Ban" (บ้าน) is somewhat ambigious, as it used for an individual house as well as for a village.

All the village names start with "ban".

The smallest neighbourhood is the "mu ban" (หมู่บ้าน, group of houses).

But in this context it stands for an individual house of course.

In particular a private house/home.

For large (public) buildings/halls etc. the prefix is "rong" (โรง), e.g. for every school [โรงเรียน] and hospital [โรงพยาบาล].

"Ban Thai", traditional Thai wooden houses on stilts, some pics:

http://goo.gl/cEGVZY

[Johpa]

Baan Thai, or Bahn Thai, is probably the most common Thai restaurant name in the US and is probably best translated as simply "Thai House" but it does not necessarily refer to the architecture of the house.

[AyG]

To add an linguistic note,

"the word bâan is the the word used in various languages of the Tai language family to mean village. It had this same meaning in the older days in Thai, but nowadays the meaning was narrowed down to mean a "house, home".

Source: Kullawanijja (1992) quoted in The Language of Thai Village Names by Sujkaritlak Deepadung.