[Tlc] T-"Siam"

[justinm at ucr.edu]

It is risky to enter the lists of the internet. I am no
authority on this factoid, and I stand to be corrected if
correction is in order. I think the derivation of "Siam" is
that it comes from the toponym -- Hsien, or sometimes Hsien-lo
-- by which the Chinese (Mongol or Yuan dynasty) referred to
the northcentral Tai state that today‘s usage calls Sukhothai.
I recall that there may be some Ming references to Hsien. Was 
it not a term by which the Tai polity in the Chaophraya River
basin was known to outsiders? "Siam" was coined in the
mid-nineteenth century in the sense that Hsien was Anglicized.
The problem with proposing "Siam" as the name of the country
today is that its usage necessarily evokes this historical
legacy and the ancien regime of the late nineteenth and 
early twentieth centuries that was dislodged by the events of
1932 and following years. But, as the past sixty years have
unfolded, really not so ancien (Fr) as one might have assumed
in the 1930s.

Craig Reynolds

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu