I do not have much knowledge of this country and so I had to take a walk down to my library for a few books, I started with the history of Thailand. I love history. So for the next few posts I will be writing about the history of this lovely country. The Kingdom of Thailand is a country in Southeast Asia. To its east lie Laos and Cambodia; to its south, the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia. To its west, the Andaman Sea and Myanmar. Its capital and largest city is Bangkok. The country’s official name was Siam: origin unknown until 24 June 1939,when it was changed to Thailand. I remember the movie “The King of Siam” had no idea it was Thailand. Thailand was renamed Siam between 1945 and 11 May 1949. After which the name Thailand was once again adopted. The word Thai is not, as commonly believed to be, derived from the word Tai meaning “free” in the Thai language; it is, however, the name of an ethnic group from the central plains the Thai people.
A famous Thai scholar (whose name I sadly forget, sorry) argued that Tai simply means “people” or “human being” since his investigation shows that in some rural areas the word “Tai” was used instead of the usual Thai word “khon” for people. With that in mind the locals seemed to have also accepted the alternative meaning and will verbally state that it means “Land of the free”. This might be due to language barriers and the avoidance of long difficult explanations
Maybe the phrase “Land of the Free” was a good intention PR phrase by some tourist organizer to sell tours to Thailand before it became a tourist Mecca.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Amazing Thailand.
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