Naughty Naughty – a guide to Thai words with unfortunate English meanings
Have you ever heard a Thai word that can crack a smile on your face? Come on, you can’t help but smile when you hear that Porn is going out with nong Fuck. Food, names of people, places, might make you giggle once in a while. So, here you are, a list of naughty Thai words.
Fuk! Fuktong! Fukmeaw!
This is a common word that you may all have heard. When you first hear this word, you know what you are thinking right? It sounds naughtier when it is used in the word fuktong and fukmeaw because it can mean fuck the person called ‘Tong’ and ‘Meaw’. Basically, fuk in Thai refers to any kind of gourd or squash. Fuktong and fukmeaw are a specific gourd which are pumpkin and chayote respectively. The funniest one is fukmee which in Thai could mean something like ‘having enough gourd’. But don’t laugh too much if you know someone with this name.
Thai with weird food
Food with prick!? Most of you know that prick is chili pepper in Thai and nothing to do with a penis. As prick (chili) is the main ingredient of loads of Thai dishes. Pad prick is a funny example. Pad means ‘stir’, so it could be referred to ‘stir prick’ even though you may know that prick is chili, but the sound is tempting to think dirty, isn’t it?
Another very common dish in a Thai restaurant is khao pad, as you can see there are many kinds of khao pad on a Thai menu. Sounds like cow’s pad! Cow shit basically. Not a great meal. Actually, it is not ‘cow’ but khao with a higher pitch and it means rice.
Porn’s at the beach…
Many Thai names can become a joke as their sounds are similar to swear words in English or sexual references. A very common name for a Thai woman is Porn. There is a joke about this name featuring a Thai girl named Porn who went to the beach and updated her status on Facebook in English: Porn’s at the beach.
Pornpiss – the word piss, in fact, is pronounced pid and it means ‘big amount of something’. But because of the Thai spelling it is written as piss, which might make some foreigners laugh. Our beautiful name Pornpiss meaning ‘full of blessings’ becomes something very different in English.
Tossaporn – Similarly, the word Tossa, or correctly pronounced Todsa, means ten. When put together with porn, the interpretation is to have a lot of something. Tossaporn therefore means ‘having many blessings’, but again, the English is different.
Pornthip – This is a popular name for Thai women. Thip means splendid and that makes Pornthip mean a splendid blessing.
Others common names that raise a smile are:
Terdsak – It sounds familiar to turd sack, hmm, a sack of shit. In fact, terd means worship and sak means honour. Therefore, Terdsak literally means worship the honor.
Choke dee – This means lucky, though the English sound doesn’t make for a great name.
Bang-on –. Bang in a short tone and means cover or shelter. However, bang combined with on means ‘pretty lady or cute girl’.
Warning: Remember that (most) Thais respect the fact that they got their names from their parents, so to laugh at the names means degrading the parents. A big no no unless you are on good terms with the person and they understand why you might think their name is amusing.
Want to go to Bang Sue?
Not only Thais’ names, but the places’ names as well might sound funny or dirty to foreigners. A popular word that is put in the names of places is Bang. There is Bang Sue, Bang Rak, Bank Na, and many others. The reason is that in old Thai bang means ‘area by the river’, then it is followed by the name of each area. Maybe the funniest name is our capital city, Bangkok, as it sounds like bang cock. Kok in this sense means olive. Therefore, Bangkok refers to the area by the river where olives grow.
Thongs
Thong literally means metal that has a beautiful color in Thai, it mostly refers to gold. Combined with other Thai words, thong can also mean holy. An example is o-gart-thong means the golden opportunity, seingthong literally means golden voice, which refers to a person with very impressive singing, and meu (hand) thong for someone with professional hand skills. It used with wai thong(golden age) as well which means the menopause stage of life for women. If a woman is moody all the time, Thais will make joke and say they are waithong.
Eight tits
Tit is the Thai word for direction, used with North, South, West, South, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest. Therefore, ‘eighttits’ means every direction or every place. Tit also refers to a man having left the monkhood. Athit means Sun and wanatit means Sunday.
More Shit?
Shit is sounds like chid in Thai, which means up close. It usually comes with the word krai. Kraichid means close up. You can find this word in one of the areas iof Bangkok, called Mor Chit. Mor means doctor and chit is the name of a doctor. Doctor Chit was a man made a famous kind of snuff. That area is now called mor chit.
KokKokKok
A bit like the onomatopoeic ‘knock’ as in knock-knock in English. Kok means tap in Thai. The full name of it is koknam, literally means water tap. Unfortunately, it is likely to be pronounced like cock in English.
