Thai nicknames

Many Thai people have names that are either rather long, hard to pronounce, hard to remember, or all three. So as a workaround, virtually every Thai I’ve met has a nickname that consists of one syllable, sometimes two. Many foreigners also have names that are long, hard to pronounce, hard to remember, or all three. For most Thais I’ve met, mine falls under the “hard to pronounce” category.

Yesterday, I met a young student from Songkhla who was working for the week at Tap Tawaan, building a school there. She was having trouble with my name, and decided to Thai-ify it. So in Thailand I am now “Rak”, because she says it sounds close to my name, and it has a nice meaning (rak in Thai means “love”. Aawww!).

Since I revealed that her Thai nickname (Pan) in Spanish means “bread” she wanted a Spanish nickname, so I gave her the nickname “Amiga”. It kind of defeats the whole really short nickname idea, but oh well. She liked it.