How to transcribe Thai place names into Burmese

Burmese is quite inconsistent in its transcription of foreign place names. Historical practice has tended toward preservation of the original language’s orthography. For example, the Burmese word for France is ပြင်သစ်, pronounced Pyinthit in modern Burmese, but spelt prang sac, which is much closer to the Roman spelling of France.

Nowadays, the prevailing trend is to imitate pronunciation of the place name in the English language. However, when it comes to place names that use obvious Indic loanwords, especially in neighboring countries like Thailand, Burmese speakers, on occasion, employ equivalent Indic spellings. For one, Bangkok’s International Airport, called Suvarnabhumi, is rendered into Burmese as Thuwunnabumi (သုဝဏ္ဏဘူမိ), in line with the actual Indic orthography, not with the actual Thai pronunciation (Suwannaphum) nor with the expected English pronunciation.

Unfortunately, this is an exception, not the rule. In many instances, Burmese speakers fail to recognize the Indic origins of the Thai place names they transcribe. Instead, they create Frankenstein transcriptions that are neither based on original orthography nor the intended pronunciation, ultimately doing a disservice to the longstanding literary and linguistic heritage shared by both Thais and the Burmese.

Oddities of Thai Orthography

The Burmese and Thai alphabets share similarities as both are descendants of the Brahmi script, have consonants with inherent vowels, use diacritics to change tone and vowel, and more importantly, both possess complete alphabet inventories capable of transcribing both Pali and Sanskrit.

The interesting thing about Thai is that while the actual pronunciation may diverge significantly from the original Indic pronunciation (making Thai orthography difficult to master), it tends to preserve the original Indic spelling. Consequently, it’s quite easy to trace back the etymological root.

For example, the Thai word for “food,” ahaan (อาหาร), is actually spelt āhāra, identical to the Burmese word for “nutrition,” ahaya (အာဟာရ). Both loanwords, of course, come from Pali. Needless to say, I came across this many times when I studied elementary Thai in college, where I recognized basic words based on similarities with a corresponding word in Burmese, as the words shared the same etymological root (despite being neighbors, Burmese and Thai have not exchanged many native words to each other’s languages–the majority of shared vocabulary tends to come from Sanskrit or Pali). However, this is one of many reasons that learning to read in Thai is much more challenging than in Burmese, because pronunciation diverges from spelling very frequently.

Unlike Thai, the Burmese script innovated a devowelizer diacritic (အသတ်, athat, ‘sound killer’), which suppresses the inherent vowel of a particular word, useful in indicating whether a word has been truncated (especially important in Indic-based vocabulary).

For instance, the Burmese word for “appearance” comes from Pali rupa (ရုပ). In Burmese, this is rendered as rup (ရုပ်), with the devowelizer clearly indicating that the pa in rupa isn’t pronounced as a separate syllable. In Thai, however, the same word is spelt รูป, which can be pronounced either rup or rupa depending on context, as the following table illustrates:

	Burmese	Thai
Original Indic form	rupa ရူပ	rupa รูป
Truncated form	rup ရုပ်	rup รูป

Why Are Thai Place names So Long?

Thailand has a history of elevating people and places to higher status through the adoption of Indic loans, whether in the form of royal titles or place names. Consequently, Thailand is replete with Sanskrit- and Pali-derived place names that should be somewhat familiar to the Burmese. In fact, the majority of Thai provinces and major cities use place names that are direct Sanskrit/Pali loans.

In terms of city names, Thais prefer the following Indic words in naming cities and towns (words that any Burmese with some familiarity with historical chronicles or even the fanciful place names in Naypyidaw would recognize):

• Thani, from Pali/Sanskrit ṭhānī (spelt ธานี in Thai, ဌာနီ in Burmese)
• Nakhon, from Pali/Sanskrit nagara (spelt นคร in Thai, နဂရ in Burmese)
• Buri, from Pali/Sanskrit purī (spelt บุรี in Thai, ပုရီ in Burmese)

Burmese practices in Transcribing THai Place names

Unfortunately, the conventional practice by Burmese speakers, when transcribing Thai place names, is to follow the English phonetic spelling and render that into Burmese pronunciation, as close as possible. This is a short-sighted practice that completely eliminates the original meanings portrayed by the place names, meanings that could be discerned by Burmese speakers. A few examples below:

Thai	Burmese Transcription		Meaning
	Current	Proposed
Nakhon Si Thammarat นครศรีธรรมราช	Nakhun Sihtamara နခွမ်စီထမာရ	Nagara Sirī Dhammarāja နဂရသိရီဓမ္မရာဇ	“City of the Glorious Dhammaraja”
Phetchaburi เพชรบุรี	Phetchaburi ဖက်ချဘူရီ	Vajirapurī ဝဇိရပုရီ	“City of Diamonds”
Ratchaburi ราชบุรี	Ratchburi ရတ်ချ်ဘူရီ	Rājapurī ရာဇပုရီ	“City of the King”
Kanchanaburi กาญจนบุรี	Kanchanaburi ကန်ချာနာဘူရီ	Kāñcanapurī ကဉ္စနပုရီ	“City of Gold”

Proposed Burmese Transcriptions for Thai Place Names

I studied almost 40 Thai city names to see whether they could be accurately transcribed into Burmese–excluded are Thai place names that employ indigenous Thai words and Khmer loanwords. Below are my proposed Burmese equivalents to the Thai city names:

Thai	Burmese	Pali (Sanskrit)	Etymological Meaning
Nakhon Ratchasima นครราชสีมา	Nagara Razathima နဂရရာဇသီမာ	Nagara Rājasīmā	nagara = town; rāja = king; sīmā = boundary
Ubon Ratchathani อุบลราชธานี	Oppala Razahtani ဥပ္ပလရာဇဌာနီ	Uppala Rajaṭhānī	uppala = waterlily; rājaṭhānī = king’s abode
Buriram บุรีรัมย์	Puriramma ပုရီရမ္မ	Purīramma (Purīramyā)	purī = city; ramma = charming
Udon Thani อุดรธานี	Ottara Htani ဥတ္တရဌာနီ	Uttaraṭhānī	uttara = northern; ṭhānī = city
Nakhon Si Thammarat นครศรีธรรมราช	Nagara Thiri Dhammaraza နဂရသိရီဓမ္မရာဇ	Nagara Sirīdhammarāja (Nagara Srīdharmarāja)	nagara = city; sīri = glorious; dhamma = teaching; rāja = king
Sisaket ศรีสะเกษ	Thirithaketha သိရီသ?ကေသ	Sirīsakesa (Srīsakesa)	sīri = glorious; sa = wash?; kesa = hair
Surin สุรินทร์	Thureinda သုရိန္ဒ	Surinda (Surendra)	sura = god; inda = Indra
Chonburi ชลบุรี	Zalapuri ဇလပုရီ	Jalapurī	jala = water; purī = city
Samut Prakan สมุทรปราการ	Thamoddapakara သမုဒ္ဒပါကာရ	Samuddapākāra (Samudraprākāra)	samudda = ocean; pākāra = encircling wall
Chaiyaphum ชัยภูมิ	Zeyabumi ဇယဘူမိ	Jayabhūmi	jaya = victory; bhūmi = land
Sakhon Nakhon สกลนคร	Thakala Nagara သကလနဂရ	Sakalanagara	sakala = complete; nagara = city
Nonthaburi นนทบุรี	Nandapuri နန္ဒပုရီ	Nandapurī	nanda = blissful; purī = city
Nakhon Sawan นครสวรรค์	Nagara Thegga နဂရသဂ္ဂ	Nagarasagga (Nagarasvarga)	nagara = city; sagga = heaven
Surat Thani สุราษฎร์ธานี	Thurattha Htani သုရဋ္ဌဌာနီ	Suraṭṭhathani (Surāstrāṭhānī)	su = good; rattha = kingdom; ṭhānī = city
Phetchaburi เพชรบุรี	Wazirapuri ဝဇိရပုရီ	Vajirapurī (Vajrapurī)	vajira = diamond; purī = city
Pathum Thani ปทุมธานี	Padoma Htani ပဒုမဌာနီ	Padumaṭhānī	paduma = lotus; ṭhānī = city
Kalasin กาฬสินธุ์	Kalatheindu ကာလသိန္ဓု	Kālasindhu	kāla = black; sindhu = river
Maha Sarakham มหาสารคาม	Maha Tharagama မဟာသာရဂါမ	Mahāsāragāma (Mahāsāragrāma)	mahā = great; sāra = excellent; gāma = village
Nakhon Pathom นครปฐม	Nagara Pahtama နဂရပထမ	Nagarapathama (Nagaraprathama)	nagara = city; pathama = first
Phitsanulok พิษณุโลก	Wathulawka [1] ဝါသုလောက	Vāsuloka (Visṇuloka)	vāsu = Vishnu; loka = world
Suphan Buri สุพรรณบุรี	Thuwannapuri သုဝဏ္ဏပုရီ	Suvaṇṇapurī (Suvarnapuri)	suvaṇṇa = gold; purī = city
Kanchanaburi กาญจนบุรี	Kinzanapuri ကဉ္စနပုရီ	Kāñcanapurī	kāñcana = gold; purī = city
Ratchaburi ราชบุรี	Razapuri ရာဇပုရီ	Rājapurī	rāja = king; purī = city
Ayutthaya อยุธยา	Ayodya အယုဓျ	Ayudhya (Ayodhyā)	city of Ayodhya [2]
Lopburi ลพบุรี	Lawapuri လဝပုရီ	Lavapurī	lava = Lavo people; puri = city
Narathiwat นราธิวาส	Naradiwatha နရဓိဝါသ	Naradhivāsa	nara = people; adhivāsa = dwelling
Saraburi สระบุรี	Tharapuri သရပုရီ	Sarapurī	sara = ponds; puri = city
Sukhothai สุโขทัย	Thukhawdaya သုခေါဒယ [3]	Sukhodaya	sukho = bliss; udaya = ascent
Sawankhalok สวรรคโลก	Theggalawka သဂ္ဂလောက	Saggaloka (Svargaloka)	sagga = heavenly; loka = world
Phichit พิจิตร	Wizitta ဝိစိတ္တ	Vicitta (Vicitra)	vicitta = ornamented
Yasothon ยโสธร	Yathawdara ယသောဓရ	Yasodhara	yasodhara = famous
Chanthaburi จันทบุรี	Sandapuri စန္ဒပုရီ	Candapurī (Candrapurī)	canda = moon; purī = city
Prachinburi ปราจีนบุรี	Pazinapuri ပါစီနပုရီ	Pācīnapurī (Prācīnapurī)	pācīna = eastern; purī = city
Uttaradit อุตรดิตถ์	Ottarateittha ဥတ္တရတိတ္ထ	Uttaratittha (Uttaratīrtha)	uttara = northern; tittha = harbor
Mukdahan มุกดาหาร	Mottahara မုတ္တာဟာရ	Muttāhāra (Muktāhāra)	muttāhāra = string of pearls
Chai Nat ชัยนาท	Zeyanada ဇယနာဒ	Jayanāda	jaya = victory; nāda = cry
Uthai Thani อุทัยธานี	Udaya Htani ဥဒယဌာနီ	Udayaṭhānī	udaya = rise; ṭhānī = city
Nakhon Nayok นครนายก	Nagara Nayaka နဂရနာယက	Nagaranāyaka	nagara = city; nāyaka = leaders
Sing Buri สิงห์บุรี	Thihapuri [4] သီဟပုရီ	Sīhapurī (Simhapuri)	sīha = lion; purī = city
Samut Songkhram สมุทรสงคราม	Thamodda Theingama သမုဒ္ဒသင်္ဂါမ	Samuddasaṅgāma (Samudrasangrāma)	samudda = ocean; saṅgāma = war

The list is certainly far from complete and perhaps some etymologies are inaccurate. If that’s the case, please let me know so I can correct them.

Footnotes

1. Could be further indigenized into Beitthanolawka (ဗိဿနိုးလောက), since the Burmese word for Vishnu is actually Beikthano (ဗိဿနိုး), a borrowing of Sanskrit Viṣṇu (ဝိၑ္ဏု), not from Pali Vāsu (ဝါသု).
2. An Indian city, also known as Sāketa (သာကေတ).
3. Sukhodaya (သုခေါဒယ) is used in Burmese in reference to Sukhothai, although Thaukkate (သောက္ကတဲ) is more popular.
4. Can also be spelt Singhapuri (သိံဟပုရီ) in Sanskrit.

Bonus Edition: Place Names in Bangkok

Thai	Burmese	Pali (Sanskrit)	Etymological Meaning
Thonburi ธนบุรี	Danapuri ဓနပုရီ	Dhanapuri	dhana = riches; purī = city
Thawi Wattana ทวีวัฒนา	Htawi Wadana ထဝိဝဎန	Thavivaḍhana	thavi = extoled; vaḍhana = growth
Ratchathewi ราชเทวี	Yazadewi ရာဇဒေဝီ	Rajadevi	rājadevī = queen
Watthana วัฒนา	Wadhana ဝဎန	Vaḍhana (Varḍhana)	vaḍhana = growth
Pathum Wan ปทุมวัน	Padomawana ပဒုမဝန	Padumavana	paduma = lotus; vana = forest
Sathorn สาทร	Thadara သာဒရ	Sādara	sādara = reverential

References

1. http://sealang.net/burmese/
2. http://sealang.net/thai/
3. http://www.thai-language.com/dict
4. http://dictionary.sutta.org

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