The Thai word "Farang", its variations in other languages, and its Arabic origin
The Thai word "Farang", its variations in other languages, and its Arabic origin
Submitted by Khalid on Sun, 2004/11/28 - 22:16.While reading a recent issue of the Canadian Geographic, I came across a news item mentioning two Canadians in Thailand, who run a magazine targeted for Westerners, called Farang. The similarity of this term to the Arabic ones piqued my interested, so I did some research on it.
I found that this term Farang means "White European" in Thai. The Wikipeda Farang article says that the origin of this term is uncertain.
The term Arabs used for Eastern Europe in the seventh century was Rum الروم being the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). For Western Europe, the term Firinjia came to be used somewhat after that, and specially during the Crusades, since a large percentage of the Crusaders were Franks. Hence the term Firinjah stuck to all Western Europeans.
As Arab traders travelled to East Asia, the term was borrowed into the languages of that region. Initially describing the Portuguese, it was used for all "whites" later.
| Arabic Word | Transliteration in Latin characters | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| فرنجة | Firinja, Firinjah | Plural |
| فرنجي | Firinji | Singular of above term |
| أفرنج | Ifranj, Afranj | Another plural form |
| أفرنجي | Ifranji, Afranji | Singular |
Here are the derivations in other languages.
| Term | Language | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| frangos, firanja | Greek | "Westerner", "Latin Catholics", "Land of the Franks" |
| ifrangi | Turkish | |
| frang | Syriac | "a European", "The Country of the Franks; Western Europe; Latin language or church" |
| afrangi, ifranji, faranji | Arabic | Arabic variations. See details in table above. |
| afrang,faranj, ferang, ferangi, feringhi | Perisan | |
| farenghi | Hindi | |
| farengi, farangi, pirangi | Tamil | |
| farangi | Malayalam | |
| farang | Thai | |
| barang | Cambodian Khmer | |
| pha-rang, pha-lang-xa | Vietnamese | |
| palang | Malaysia | |
| barang | Bahasa Indonesia | |
| paalagi, papalangi, vaalagi, papa-'aa | Samoan/Maori | Likely a coincidence ? |
References
- FAQS.org : Origin of the Word Farangi by Gwyn Williams
- The Thai word 'Farang' in sci.lang
- The Linguist List had several discussions on this in 1993 and 1994, such as 1, 2, 3 and 4
»
about your list
barang Bahasa Indonesia
palang Malaysia
First word barang in Indonesian (this is Malaysian word too) means : goods, not refer to a group of people.
Second word palang means = cross or long stick not refer to a group of people
In the past before 16 century we Indonesian/Malaysian use the word Farangi, that was referred to Portuguese.
FARANGI IS A PERSIAN WORD,
THE WORD FARANG OR PARANG, IS A PERSIAN WORD FOR FORIENG, AND IT IS SPREAD AROUND THE ASIA AND MIDDLE-EAST THRU PERSIAN EMPIRE! MOST OF DEVIATIONS OF THIS WORD ARE THE LOCAL ACCENT BASED!
Post new comment