In 1939, the country’s name was changed from
“Siam” to its present English-language name
“Thailand.” “Siam” is a non-Thai word (possibly Khmer
or Chinese) that came into use after its formal
appearance in the nineteenth-century treaties with
Britain and France. “Thailand” is a literal translation of
the Thai-language name for the country (Warr and
Bhanupong 1996, 9).