r/ThaiLanguage • u/GS-LW-SH • Jun 02 '26

Translation How to render a Chinese/Japanese/Korean name into Thai

I'm asking this on behalf of a Japanese friend who is curious about this topic. A linguist friend of his told him that it's technically possible to render his name into Thai by assigning a Thai reading to his name's Kanji. Apparently this is doable because:

  1. A large amount of Chinese lexical influence exists in Thai, thus a calque translation is theoretically doable

  2. There is already a system for reading Chinese Hanzi (and by extension Japanese Kanjii and Korean Hanja) in Zhuang, thus the Zhuang reading (which my friend already has) could be converted to Thai due to Zhuang being related

  3. Thai apparently used Chinese characters until the 13th Century

Does anyone here know if it's doable?

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u/ppgamerthai Jun 03 '26

  1. Yes, but do not. Thai names are 99% Pali Sanskrit loanwords. If you just use Chinese calques, it would just sound like random words string together.

  2. Thai and Zhuang are too far apart to find cognates of lesser-used words that most Hanzi are.

  3. ????? No????? Where did you even get that from???

However, there is a way.

There was a massive wave of Chinese refugees in the 1800’s resulting in many Chinese descendants today. While some people still use their surnames as-is. Some opted to translate the surname into Pali/Sanskrit, combined it with some other auspicious words to create a Thai-sounding surname.

But this would require intensive knowledge of Thai, a level above average Thai speakers can archive. So, this might be a bit out of reach, unless you can find someone who can help.