Bangkok, Feb 21 (US): No, English speakers and others who use the Roman alphabet won’t have to start naming the Thai capital by its local name, Krung Tep Maha Nakhon, and dropping the more famous “Bangkok”.
That’s the message from Thailand’s Royal Society, which is responsible for academic and language standards, after a seemingly harmless change to punctuation in the official directive sparked a wave of speculation that the city’s name had been changed, The Associated Press reports.
It began when the Cabinet on Tuesday approved the Royal Society’s proposal to change the way the capital is referred to internationally from “Krung Tep Maha Nakhon;” Bangkok” to “Kroung Tep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok)”.
When people have sought to explain the meaning behind changing the semicolon into parentheses, many have put so much weight on the accompanying interpretation that it will “revise” the capital’s name and keep the “earlier” name in parentheses.
The capital is already officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, which literally means “Great City of Angels,” and most Thais shorten it to just Krung Thep in conversation.
As speculation mounts, the Royal Society on Wednesday clarified in a Facebook post that their new directive was just a change of style.
“The official name of the capital can be written in both the Roman alphabet as Krung Tep Maha Nakhon and Bangkok,” the government agency said, allaying fears of any non-Thai speaker about adopting the more complex name.
Even if the Royal Society had intended to change the name to the one used by Thais, another option would have been more challenging for foreign tongues.
The Thai name for Bangkok, Krung Tep Maha Nakhon, is actually a short form of the capital’s full name, and is rooted in Pali and Sanskrit and is more of a description of the city than a name: Krung Tep Mahanakhon Amun Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirwet Mahanakhon Udomratch Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit.
This is the longest place name in the world, according to Guinness World Records.