Farang
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Farang (in Thai: ฝรั่ง), sometimes pronounced falang, is the generic Thai word for a white foreigner. It is closely related to the Khmer word Barang. Blacks will be occasionally referred to as farang dam (black farang, in Thai: ฝรั่งดำ). While generally farang is a neutral word, it can be used as an insult depending on its context. For instance, the expression "farang ta nam khao" (in Thai: ฝรั่งตาน้ำข้าว, which literally means farang with rice-milk-colored iris) would be considered an insult.
Farang is also the Thai word for the guava fruit, which of course can lead to "farang eating farang" (ฝรั่งกินฝรั่ง) jokes from Thai people when foreigners are seen eating a guava in Thailand. Stingy or unruly foreigners can therefore also be referred to as kee nok (bird shit, in Thai: ขี้นก), which is the name of a particular variety of guava. Varieties of food/produce which were introduced by Europeans are often called 'farang' varieties. Hence, potatoes are man farang (in Thai: มันฝรั่ง), whereas man (มัน) alone can be any variety tuber; parsley is called phak chii farang (ผักชีฝรั่ง, literally farang cilantro); and chewing gum is maak farang (หมากฝรั่ง). Maak (หมาก) is Thai for betel, which many rural Thais chew for the buzz it gives. When chewing gum was introduced, it was thus labeled farang betel, maak farang.
In the Isan language, the guava is called mak seeda, which can thus also be used to refer to a farang.
One explanation for the origin of this word is that it is borrowed from the Persian word farang which means Frankish. Another explanation is that it derives from farangset, which is the Thai pronunciation of français, the French word for 'French' or 'Frenchman'. France was one of the first European nations to establish cultural ties with Thailand in the 17th century, so to Thais at that time, 'white man' and 'Frenchman' were synonymous. Others say that in the Ayutthaya period, land was given to the Portuguese merchants to conduct their business at "Baan Farang" (Guava Village).
In Persian, the word farangi refers to foreigners. It comes from the word "frank", meaning French. The reason for this is the fact that the French were the first European nation that helped the Ghajar Kings modernize the Iranian government, in particular with the establishment of customs, in Persian, gomrok. Long before English, until ca the 1960s, French was the foreign language of choice for educated Iranians. The abundance of French words in the Persian language attest to this fact.
By another account the word comes through Arabic ("Afrandj"), and there are quite a few articles about it. One of the most detailed treatments of the subject is by Rashid al-din Fazl Allâh: See Karl Jahn (ed.) Histoire Universelle de Rasid al-Din Fadl Allah Abul=Khair: I. Histoire des Francs (Texte Persan avec traduction et annotations), Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1951. (Source: M. Ashtiany)
In Tamil, the word that refers to Europeans (most specifically to the British) is parangiar, presumably because Tamil does not have the "F" sound. Many South Asian and Southeast Asian languages, including Malay, also use this word to denote foreigners.
