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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand

Volume XVI-2024 (Special Issue)

Term coinage

The person who played a prominent role in coining terms was Prince Wan Waithayakon
Krom Muen Naradhip Bongsprabandh, former President of the Royal Society (1934-1947 and

1969-1973). When he returned from Europe in 1919, there were numerous coinages for use
in translating laws. In 1932, he published a newspaper and perceived that coining terms was

a necessity. He believed that it was not possible to reach the public by using the English language
because English words had not yet penetrated the minds of Thai people at that time. The best
way was to use Thai words. If Thai words could not be found, Pali and Sanskrit words that had

already been in existence in the Thai language could be used.
The Royal Society Dictionary B.E. 2554 states that coined terms are words that have been

coined or determined to have specific meanings on a case-by-case basis, such as television, bank,
state enterprise.

How are these coined terms created?
In linguistics, there are two related terms: borrowing and transliteration.

The Royal Society Dictionary B.E. 2554 states that:
Borrowing means asking for something, money, etc., to use for a period of time and
then returning it or reimbursing for the amount borrowed, taking something from someone else

to use as your own, such as borrowing words from Pali, borrowing Western culture, or borrowing
ideas.

Transliteration is the method of writing words from one language with the letters of
another language by transliteration and transcription, such as the word computer is transliterated

as คอมพิวิเตอร์ (khomphiotoe).
The Royal Society Dictionary of Linguistic Terms (Applied Linguistics) B.E. 2553 gives

definitions summarized as follows:
A borrowed word or loanword is a word that does not originally exist in a language, but
is a new word that has been brought in from another language out of necessity, due to the lack

of words to express new ideas or call new things, or because words from other languages are
popular even though there have already been words in their own language. Loanwords can be

divided into different types: loanword proper, loan blend, loan shift, and loan translation (calque).
A loanword proper is borrowed for both sound and meaning. The sound may be changed to be

consistent with the sound system of the borrower’s language. For example, the word “บัอล” (bol)
pronounced “บัอน” (bon) is a loanword proper from the English word “ball.” When the word

“บัอล” is pronounced, the final sound /l/ (ล) in English changes to the sound /n/ (น) in Thai
to be consistent with the final sound system of Thai.

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