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I live in Thailand and I cannot get over the fact that romanization is (seemingly?) completely unstandardized. Even government signage uses different English sp

I live in Thailand and I cannot get over the fact that romanization is (seemingly?) completely unstandardized. Even government signage uses different English spelling of Thai words.

kazinator 10mo ago
In the first place, "romanization" of English is unstandardized! Or was that unstandardised?
- adastra22 10mo ago
  It tends to be standardized within a single country.
  - qingcharles 10mo ago
    Whoosh :)
    - adastra22 10mo ago
      No I understood. I just failed to see the relevance.
  - merelysounds 10mo ago
    Standardizations can be notoriously inconsistent[1], disregarded[2] or evolve fast[3]. There’s a surprising amount of interesting articles on wikipedia about that. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)#Spelling_reforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)#Spelling_re... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_dialect [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensational_spelling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensational_spelling
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - aidenn0 10mo ago
    Is it hiccough or hiccup in the US?
  - jagged-chisel 10mo ago
    And standardised within an empire.
Stevvo 10mo ago
Thailand, famously, was never colonized by European powers. Everywhere else, some colonial administrator standardized a system of romanization.
- floren 10mo ago
  Japan was not colonized, although it was briefly occupied.
- petesergeant 10mo ago
  Oh there are plenty of standards, including an official one. The problem is nobody uses them. Thai writing is weird, and between the tones and the character classes and silent letters might as well just make some shit up. My birth certificate, drivers license, and work permit all had different spellings of my name on them. IIRC, the road signs for “Henri Dunant Road” were spelled differently on either end, which was ironic, because at least that did have a canonical Latin form.
- graemep 10mo ago
  Sri Lanka was a colony and Sinhala does not have a standard as far as I know. If there is one no one pays any attention to it.
ilamont 10mo ago
You should have seen Taiwan in the 1990s. It was a hot mess of older Western romanization systems, historical and dialectical exceptions, competing Taiwanese and pro-China sensibilities, a widely used international standard (pinyin), and lots of confusion in official and private circles about the proper way to write names and locations using the Latin alphabet. In 1998, the City of Taipei even made up its own Romanization system for street names at the behest of its then-new mayor, a supporter of Taiwan independence (https://pinyin.info/news/2019/article-on-early-tongyong-pinyin-on-taipei-street-signs/ https://pinyin.info/news/2019/article-on-early-tongyong-piny...). The chart halfway down this blog post lays out some of the challenges once the hanyu pinyin standard was instituted in 2009: https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/on-romanization/ https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/on-romanization/ The author concludes with this observation: So that’s why people in Taiwan can’t spell anything consistently and why all the English-language newspapers spell the same things differently. As for me, I’m giving up on trying to remember how everyone spells their name. I know lots of people, especially Taiwan nationalists, dislike having the PRC hanyu pinyin system. I dislike imposing it upon them. However, in only three weeks, I’ve found myself spelling the same thing in multiple ways and wasting time looking up how I did it last time. Since almost no one reads my blog anyway, I’ll do it the way that’s most convenient for me. I’ll also always provide the Chinese characters so that people who can read them know who I’m talking about.
jerriep 10mo ago
Yeah, my full names are Jeremia Josiah, and on my work permit they wrote the Thai version as เจอเรเมีย โยชิอา. I cannot figure out why they chose to use จ for the J in Jeremia but ย for the J in Josiah. Both are pronounced the same and I would consider จ the correct choice. I would consider ย more correct for representing a word with Y.
- rfarley04 10mo ago
  That's hilarious. The one I always notice is ก getting romanized as a K, ie Kanchanaburi or กานต์ becoming Karn.
yongjik 10mo ago
Korea is stuck in a funny middle ground, where names like cities or railway stations all follow the standard without exception, while personal or corporate names are in a state of total chaos. So the cell phone maker is Samsung, but the subway station in Seoul is Samseong, even though they're written and pronounced in the same way in Korean. (No, they aren't related.) It's unfortunate but I don't think it'll get fixed any time soon. Nobody wants to be called Mr. I, O, U, An, or No. (The most common romanization for these family names would be: Lee, Oh, Woo, Ahn, and Roh.)
- deaux 10mo ago
  You've nerd sniped me! No country is going to force their big multinationals to change their international name they chose back in the 50s and are now known as world-wide. Personal names aren't too chaotic either, as the choice presented when choosing a romanization is limited, people can't just make stuff up on the ground. They're off, but generally in the same ways. > Nobody wants to be called Mr. I, O, U, An, or No. An is pretty common - given the massive reach of KPop among global youth, I wouldn't be surprised if the most well-known 안씨 as of 2025 was an "An" (a member of the group 아이브). Roh has fallen out of favor, young 노s generally go with Noh, the Rohs are usually older people. I too do long for the day where an 이 or 우 just goes with I or U, or if they must, at least Ih or Uh :) IMO you left out the worst offender, Park. At least with 이 or 우 I can see why people would be hesitant to go the proper route, as most of the world is unfamiliar with single-phoneme names, but 박s have no excuse. With 이, there's a pretty good alternative as well, and what's more - it's actually already in use when talking about the greatest Korean in history, Yi Sun-Shin! So much better than "Lee".

I live in Thailand and I cannot get over the fact that romanization is (seemingly?) completely unstandardized. Even government signage uses different English spelling of Thai words.

kazinator 10mo ago

In the first place, "romanization" of English is unstandardized! Or was that unstandardised?

adastra22 10mo ago
It tends to be standardized within a single country.
- qingcharles 10mo ago
  Whoosh :)
  - adastra22 10mo ago
    No I understood. I just failed to see the relevance.
- merelysounds 10mo ago
  Standardizations can be notoriously inconsistent[1], disregarded[2] or evolve fast[3]. There’s a surprising amount of interesting articles on wikipedia about that. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)#Spelling_reforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)#Spelling_re... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_dialect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_dialect [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensational_spelling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensational_spelling
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- aidenn0 10mo ago
  Is it hiccough or hiccup in the US?
- jagged-chisel 10mo ago
  And standardised within an empire.

Stevvo 10mo ago

Thailand, famously, was never colonized by European powers. Everywhere else, some colonial administrator standardized a system of romanization.

floren 10mo ago
Japan was not colonized, although it was briefly occupied.
petesergeant 10mo ago
Oh there are plenty of standards, including an official one. The problem is nobody uses them. Thai writing is weird, and between the tones and the character classes and silent letters might as well just make some shit up. My birth certificate, drivers license, and work permit all had different spellings of my name on them. IIRC, the road signs for “Henri Dunant Road” were spelled differently on either end, which was ironic, because at least that did have a canonical Latin form.
graemep 10mo ago
Sri Lanka was a colony and Sinhala does not have a standard as far as I know. If there is one no one pays any attention to it.

ilamont 10mo ago

You should have seen Taiwan in the 1990s. It was a hot mess of older Western romanization systems, historical and dialectical exceptions, competing Taiwanese and pro-China sensibilities, a widely used international standard (pinyin), and lots of confusion in official and private circles about the proper way to write names and locations using the Latin alphabet. In 1998, the City of Taipei even made up its own Romanization system for street names at the behest of its then-new mayor, a supporter of Taiwan independence (https://pinyin.info/news/2019/article-on-early-tongyong-pinyin-on-taipei-street-signs/ https://pinyin.info/news/2019/article-on-early-tongyong-piny...). The chart halfway down this blog post lays out some of the challenges once the hanyu pinyin standard was instituted in 2009: https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/on-romanization/ https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/on-romanization/ The author concludes with this observation: So that’s why people in Taiwan can’t spell anything consistently and why all the English-language newspapers spell the same things differently. As for me, I’m giving up on trying to remember how everyone spells their name. I know lots of people, especially Taiwan nationalists, dislike having the PRC hanyu pinyin system. I dislike imposing it upon them. However, in only three weeks, I’ve found myself spelling the same thing in multiple ways and wasting time looking up how I did it last time. Since almost no one reads my blog anyway, I’ll do it the way that’s most convenient for me. I’ll also always provide the Chinese characters so that people who can read them know who I’m talking about.

jerriep 10mo ago

Yeah, my full names are Jeremia Josiah, and on my work permit they wrote the Thai version as เจอเรเมีย โยชิอา. I cannot figure out why they chose to use จ for the J in Jeremia but ย for the J in Josiah. Both are pronounced the same and I would consider จ the correct choice. I would consider ย more correct for representing a word with Y.

rfarley04 10mo ago
That's hilarious. The one I always notice is ก getting romanized as a K, ie Kanchanaburi or กานต์ becoming Karn.

yongjik 10mo ago

Korea is stuck in a funny middle ground, where names like cities or railway stations all follow the standard without exception, while personal or corporate names are in a state of total chaos. So the cell phone maker is Samsung, but the subway station in Seoul is Samseong, even though they're written and pronounced in the same way in Korean. (No, they aren't related.) It's unfortunate but I don't think it'll get fixed any time soon. Nobody wants to be called Mr. I, O, U, An, or No. (The most common romanization for these family names would be: Lee, Oh, Woo, Ahn, and Roh.)

deaux 10mo ago
You've nerd sniped me! No country is going to force their big multinationals to change their international name they chose back in the 50s and are now known as world-wide. Personal names aren't too chaotic either, as the choice presented when choosing a romanization is limited, people can't just make stuff up on the ground. They're off, but generally in the same ways. > Nobody wants to be called Mr. I, O, U, An, or No. An is pretty common - given the massive reach of KPop among global youth, I wouldn't be surprised if the most well-known 안씨 as of 2025 was an "An" (a member of the group 아이브). Roh has fallen out of favor, young 노s generally go with Noh, the Rohs are usually older people. I too do long for the day where an 이 or 우 just goes with I or U, or if they must, at least Ih or Uh :) IMO you left out the worst offender, Park. At least with 이 or 우 I can see why people would be hesitant to go the proper route, as most of the world is unfamiliar with single-phoneme names, but 박s have no excuse. With 이, there's a pretty good alternative as well, and what's more - it's actually already in use when talking about the greatest Korean in history, Yi Sun-Shin! So much better than "Lee".