วัฒนธรรม/Wattanatham

วัฒนธรรม/Wattanatham (meaning ‘culture’) is one of over one thousand terms coined by Prince Wan Waithayakon. In a 1975 interview, Prince Wan, who attended Balliol College in Oxford and Sciences Po in Paris, explained that he returned from Europe in 1919, during “a time when the systematic creation of terminology was beginning” in Thai (cited in เสมียนอารีย์, 2568). He coined ‘wattanatham’ as a new term for ‘culture’ sometime in the 1930s.  

Chamnong Tongprasert (1971, pp. 15-16) outlines three stages involved in the creation of new Thai words (cited in เสมียนอารีย์, 2568): 

1. Look for a pre-existing Thai term. If it is unsuitable (too long, not technical), then a new word needs to be created. 
2. New words should have Pali and Sanskrit roots. The words chosen must already exist in Thai, be easy to pronounce, and sound similar to the English word if possible. If not, it should be “pleasing to the ear.” 
3. If the first two options fail, the alternative is an exact or approximate transliteration of the English word into Thai phonetics.  

Before the introduction of ‘thammachat’, ‘culture’—which was derived from the English term—followed the third method of transliteration, i.e., ‘คัลเชอร์’. In a translation of a 1930 lecture by Francis H. Giles, Prince Dhani Nivat opted to use ‘ภูมิธรรม’/phumtham in place of culture, which translates to ‘virtuous mind.’ Prince Wan thought this definition did not correspond to the meaning of ‘culture’ in English. 

Prince Wan describes how he initially opted for พฤทธิธรรม (phreuthitham), based on the Sanskrit Vṛddhi (वृद्धि), meaning growth and Dharma (धर्म), meaning the teaching of Buddha. However, this term was not widely used, and Prince Wan was also not fully satisfied with this choice, resulting in a change to ‘wattanatham’, which had “a pleasant sound and rhythm in Thai” (cited in เสมียนอารีย์, 2568). Whereas ‘phreuthitham’ came from ‘phreuthi’—prosperity and wealth, ‘wattanatham’ comes from the Pali ‘Vaddhana’, meaning growth, progress, or to cultivate/nurture. Prince Wan explains that the latter was the motivation behind his choice, as culture is “comparable to cultivating plants to grow and bear fruit for the benefit of humanity” (Matichon 2019). 

This interpretation has carried into the present, as seen in the definition of culture in the 2010 National Culture Act (พ.ร.บ.วัฒนธรรมแห่งชาติ พ.ศ. 2553): “A way of life, thoughts, beliefs, values, customs, traditions, rituals, and wisdom that groups and societies have collectively created, accumulated, cultivated, inherited, learned, improved, and changed in order to achieve peaceful and sustainable growth, both spiritually and materially.”

Chamnong (1971, p. 15) describes how Prince Wan’s new terms have become part of Thailand’s cultural heritage.