What's in an elephant's name?
What is in an elephant's name?
Well, not a great deal it would seem nowadays in Thailand. Never having been present at an elephant's birth and, until recently, having known only adult elephants I liked to imagine that naming an elephant was like naming a child - or at least nick-naming a child, as they do in Thailand, if your baby looks like a frog call it "Frog", if it is fat, call it "Fat" - no matter that the poor thing has to keep this for life and go to school in five years time, if you're ugly on your day of birth, that's your lot.
Which accounts for the large number of adults in Thailand who are known to everyone on the second time of meeting as "New" or "Small". Sometimes there are nick-names that show some forethought on the parents' behalf girls called "Sugar" or "Sugarcane", boys called "Strong" or "Noble".
Elephants, to my mind, should be similar - the names I like best are those that are obviously named after the prevailing conditions on the day of birth "Full Moon", "Beautiful Day". There seem to be many with the words for lucky or gold or strength in them too.
In ancient times, elephants that performed well or had done noble religious services were given long honourific names, the King's white elephants in Thailand are still named thus today. But times, as we know, are changing, and it may be our fault. It seems a new trend started five or six years ago, money and tourist minded mahouts started giving their baby elephants Western names.
When she arrived, Nong Dah, our 5 year old from Patpong was called Melinda, the young elephant's nickname was Dah, so that was fine - no offence to my traditional ears, no change of name, end of story. But it seems not, sensing my displeasure (and I didn't scream and shout like I normally do) her mahout took her birth certificate to his home town and had her name officially changed to Pang Kam Saen - in honour of her new home.
Of course we are flattered, everyone continues to call her Dah, but it struck me that there must be something wrong with the licensing and registration system if a mahout can get new paperwork issued, with an elephant not being present, giving the elephant a whole new identity...
...and that is where the microchips come in. What a great innovation by the Thai Government, something about the elephant that cannot be changed on a whim, cannot be dressed up to look like something else, cannot (as is the case with a lot of Northern elephants who seldom move from their homebase) be ignored for generations and never be updated so the official owner, according to the paperwork, is someone's long dead grandfather.
I was reminded of this story again in the process of buying Pang Taweekhoon and little Lynchee on behalf of elephant family and their donors. When the two elephants arrived from the streets of Pattaya, it seems no-one knew what their names were or were too shy to tell me - they called them Big C (the largest chain of department stores in Thailand) and Tesco - well, if I don't like elephants with Western human names you can imagine my feelings for elephants named after supermarkets.
"No, no, no, what are their real names, the ones they were born with?"
Eventually we got it solved, Big C, the baby didn't have a name so we were free to name her - well it was Lychee season (and she looked like a Rambutan - my mistake) so we named her Lynchee and it stuck, for Tesco the mahout kept quiet and the truck driver mumbled something about Taweekhoon.
Job done. Until the other day, we come to buy the elephant so we start collecting the paperwork and see that the elephant I.D. for Taweekhoon that is faxed to us has a completely different name on it, an obviously wrong age but some of the identifying marks fit. So we're confused, it is someone else's money so to buy the wrong elephant would be a disaster, we call the owner...
"Oh, yes, Taweekhoon is her mother's name, it's the right elephant but when they issued the certificate they just guessed at the age", sounds dodgy to me with all this money involved, so we dug a little deeper and the story got more and more twisted and further and further from what I had been told when mother and baby arrived all those months ago.
I have in the back of my mind a worry, I know offers have been made for very large amounts of money to split mother and baby in the new year (two years to early) and send my little Lynchee onto the streets - it now enters my, far too suspicious, mind what if we pay elephant family's money for two elephant certificates that turn out not to be Taweekhoon and Lynchee? ...or we end up just buying Lynchee and another elephant, not her mother? there's nothing to stop these guys splitting early and taking Taweekhoon off to breed again - denying Lynchee two years of somewhat neurotic motherly care and milk.
The possibilities are flying around my head, but (and now, again, to the hero of the piece) of course there is no problem. K. Amp (who's name, going way back, does mean frog) gets on the phone to the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre vet, Mor Tom, within a week he's here on his rounds with his microchip reader.
Beep, beep, problem solved! I don't need to care what it says on the paperwork, I don't need to care what names we say when we strike the deal, I'm buying these two microchip numbers. Nowadays names are just as souvenirs and, as un-romantic as it is, this is the necessity in dealing with elephants in the modern world.
I'm all for it.
John
PS. It turns out, by the way, that my suspicions were incorrect, everyone was acting legally and above board - but we have the peace of mind of knowing that and knowing that if the T.E.C.C. and Surin vet.s are the heroes I'm the villain of the piece!
PPS. Also, I know there are those who will rail against me changing any elephant's name as it is something that I have argued in the past is sacred, even ignoring all the suspicions of higher intelligence an adult elephant knows her name (can be called out of the herd by someone who is not her mahout) and so changing the name has to be confusing. But Big C, Tesco?
Well, not a great deal it would seem nowadays in Thailand. Never having been present at an elephant's birth and, until recently, having known only adult elephants I liked to imagine that naming an elephant was like naming a child - or at least nick-naming a child, as they do in Thailand, if your baby looks like a frog call it "Frog", if it is fat, call it "Fat" - no matter that the poor thing has to keep this for life and go to school in five years time, if you're ugly on your day of birth, that's your lot.
Which accounts for the large number of adults in Thailand who are known to everyone on the second time of meeting as "New" or "Small". Sometimes there are nick-names that show some forethought on the parents' behalf girls called "Sugar" or "Sugarcane", boys called "Strong" or "Noble".
Elephants, to my mind, should be similar - the names I like best are those that are obviously named after the prevailing conditions on the day of birth "Full Moon", "Beautiful Day". There seem to be many with the words for lucky or gold or strength in them too.
In ancient times, elephants that performed well or had done noble religious services were given long honourific names, the King's white elephants in Thailand are still named thus today. But times, as we know, are changing, and it may be our fault. It seems a new trend started five or six years ago, money and tourist minded mahouts started giving their baby elephants Western names.
When she arrived, Nong Dah, our 5 year old from Patpong was called Melinda, the young elephant's nickname was Dah, so that was fine - no offence to my traditional ears, no change of name, end of story. But it seems not, sensing my displeasure (and I didn't scream and shout like I normally do) her mahout took her birth certificate to his home town and had her name officially changed to Pang Kam Saen - in honour of her new home.
Of course we are flattered, everyone continues to call her Dah, but it struck me that there must be something wrong with the licensing and registration system if a mahout can get new paperwork issued, with an elephant not being present, giving the elephant a whole new identity...
...and that is where the microchips come in. What a great innovation by the Thai Government, something about the elephant that cannot be changed on a whim, cannot be dressed up to look like something else, cannot (as is the case with a lot of Northern elephants who seldom move from their homebase) be ignored for generations and never be updated so the official owner, according to the paperwork, is someone's long dead grandfather.
I was reminded of this story again in the process of buying Pang Taweekhoon and little Lynchee on behalf of elephant family and their donors. When the two elephants arrived from the streets of Pattaya, it seems no-one knew what their names were or were too shy to tell me - they called them Big C (the largest chain of department stores in Thailand) and Tesco - well, if I don't like elephants with Western human names you can imagine my feelings for elephants named after supermarkets.
"No, no, no, what are their real names, the ones they were born with?"
Eventually we got it solved, Big C, the baby didn't have a name so we were free to name her - well it was Lychee season (and she looked like a Rambutan - my mistake) so we named her Lynchee and it stuck, for Tesco the mahout kept quiet and the truck driver mumbled something about Taweekhoon.
Job done. Until the other day, we come to buy the elephant so we start collecting the paperwork and see that the elephant I.D. for Taweekhoon that is faxed to us has a completely different name on it, an obviously wrong age but some of the identifying marks fit. So we're confused, it is someone else's money so to buy the wrong elephant would be a disaster, we call the owner...
"Oh, yes, Taweekhoon is her mother's name, it's the right elephant but when they issued the certificate they just guessed at the age", sounds dodgy to me with all this money involved, so we dug a little deeper and the story got more and more twisted and further and further from what I had been told when mother and baby arrived all those months ago.
I have in the back of my mind a worry, I know offers have been made for very large amounts of money to split mother and baby in the new year (two years to early) and send my little Lynchee onto the streets - it now enters my, far too suspicious, mind what if we pay elephant family's money for two elephant certificates that turn out not to be Taweekhoon and Lynchee? ...or we end up just buying Lynchee and another elephant, not her mother? there's nothing to stop these guys splitting early and taking Taweekhoon off to breed again - denying Lynchee two years of somewhat neurotic motherly care and milk.
The possibilities are flying around my head, but (and now, again, to the hero of the piece) of course there is no problem. K. Amp (who's name, going way back, does mean frog) gets on the phone to the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre vet, Mor Tom, within a week he's here on his rounds with his microchip reader.
Beep, beep, problem solved! I don't need to care what it says on the paperwork, I don't need to care what names we say when we strike the deal, I'm buying these two microchip numbers. Nowadays names are just as souvenirs and, as un-romantic as it is, this is the necessity in dealing with elephants in the modern world.
I'm all for it.
John
PS. It turns out, by the way, that my suspicions were incorrect, everyone was acting legally and above board - but we have the peace of mind of knowing that and knowing that if the T.E.C.C. and Surin vet.s are the heroes I'm the villain of the piece!
PPS. Also, I know there are those who will rail against me changing any elephant's name as it is something that I have argued in the past is sacred, even ignoring all the suspicions of higher intelligence an adult elephant knows her name (can be called out of the herd by someone who is not her mahout) and so changing the name has to be confusing. But Big C, Tesco?
Good detective story John. If some of the more neurotic governments around here get their way we shall all be microchipped soon. It might have been more appropriate if the french had been involved in naming ele's after supermarkets, then Tesco could have been Mammoth.
We were interested in your explanation of the Thai nicknames. Way back in the days before Anantara Golden Triangle was born (Happy Birthday the other day), we used to stay in the same place then called Le Meridien Baan Boran and often employed a guide called Grapefruit. We were too polite in those days to ask her where the name came from.
P & J.
Reply to this
Ha, yes, I get the distinct impression it comes from whatever the cheekiest Grandparent says when he first looks into the sling - did your guide have an unusually round head?
My Grandfather allegedly wanted to name me after the Pillsbury Dough-boy (showing both his and my age) so I guess, had I been born Thai, that would have stuck - worth living with the name? though if you talk with my parents about my behaviour as a baby I may have earned some even less flattering names before the age of one!
The good news is that the nickname appears to be able to change, Aoy my fiancee was know as fhoon, 'dust', during her University years (no I haven't asked why!) but now she's back to good old 'sugarcane'. Interestingly the trend for English nicknames in humans seems to be longer than that for eles, Oil, my assistant was named for diesel fuel (no idea why) though she is now changing it to Oi, her brother the mahout was named Egg, though in fairness this could be the shape of his head, but it is definitely Egg and not the Thai 'kai'.
Either way, it seems it is important to be a good looking, well behaved baby - at least for the first few days.
Which leaves me with a big dilemma as to what to nick-name my kids, first boy Luke ('luuk' means child in Thai), second one? well Song means 'two' in Thai which might work over here but would seem a bit hippy on parental visits to the UK so perhaps the straight numbers game should be reserved for Sam - which means 'three'!?
Think we'd better let Aoy and her parents decide!
Thanks
John
Reply to this