Thai Name Generator

Thai names follow a given name plus surname order, so in Siriporn Srisuwan the person is Siriporn and Srisuwan is the family name. Surnames are a recent invention: the 1913 Surname Act required every family to register one, and because the law demanded that each surname be unique, Thai family names are long, often three or four syllables, and rarely shared outside the extended family. Many are built from Sanskrit and Pali roots meaning things like gold (thong), jewel (kaew, phet), prosperity (charoen, rungruang) or virtue (boon, sri). Thai families of Chinese descent often carry surnames beginning with Sae (Saetang, Saelim), from the Teochew word for clan.

Given names also come from Pali and Sanskrit and carry meanings of beauty, strength or good fortune. Names ending in -porn, -rat, -wan and -nee (Supaporn, Kanokwan, Warunee) are usually female; Som-, Chai-, Thana-, Kitti- and Surasak-style names are usually male, though plenty are unisex. In daily life almost nobody uses these formal names: every Thai person also has a short nickname such as Ploy, Nong, Fah, Beam or Mint that is chosen at birth and used by family, friends and coworkers. The romanizations here follow common Thai passport spelling rather than strict transliteration, so the same Thai name can appear as Sirikarn or Sirikan in real life.