Talk:Thai royal funeral

Secret cremation
This October's cremation having been done in secret (for the first time?) may be worth mentioning. --หมวดซาโต้ (talk) 02:18, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's a minor point considering the general scheme of things; I think it's better mentioned in the Death and funeral of Bhumibol Adulyadej article. --Paul_012 (talk) 06:02, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Unused references
I've removed these references added by Tris T7 from the article, as they weren't being used to support any factual statements. --Paul_012 (talk) 08:22, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Dear Paul : Sorry for what I did but I would like to ask you when you check the references I added to correct the word Phra Meru Mas as 6 references even Thomson Reuters http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/THAILAND-KING/010051FH387/index.html use the word Phra Merumas So how do I changed to correct word instead of The Merumat which have no meaning according to MFA as references ? please kindly let me know how do I fix them ? Thank you for your kindness. ..Tris T7 (talk) 12:08, 29 September 2018 (UTC)


 * and source from Thomson : Sources: The Committee on Public Relations for the Royal Cremation for His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej; Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand; Federal Research Division, Library of Congress; King Bhumibol Adulyadej: A Life's Work;

Thank you for consideration references I added.Tris T7 (talk) 12:26, 29 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The suggested links could be used as references to support the Death and funeral of Bhumibol Adulyadej article, but most of them would be of limited relevance to this article, which is meant to be a general overview. The Reuter's link is already listed under Further reading. I'll add the Bangkok Post site as well, but more than that would probably be redundant/excessive.
 * Regarding the spelling of เมรุมาศ, three points here:
 * I purposely omitted the phra and phra boromma prefixes from all rachasap (royal terms) in the article, since they only serve to indicate the royal register, a language feature not shared by English. Since in English we don't say "the King died" differently from "a commoner died", I think the phra and phra boromma prefixes are not needed in English usage when describing general terms which aren't proper nouns.
 * The spelling meru mas vs merumas vs merumat is not a matter of correctness, so it would be nonsense to say that any of them has "no meaning". They are simply different transcriptions/transliterations of the Thai word เมรุมาศ. Personally, I find meru mas with a space rather objectionable, as it should in no way be regarded as two separate words. And the official media guide actually uses merumas without a space. That said, WP:OFFICIAL states that Wikipedia doesn't always follow "official" use, and since this article is an overview for royal funerals in general, the single latest event shouldn't determine what is used here. Anyway, there's quite some variability in how the media uses the term. VOA and Khaosod English use (Phra) Meru Mas, The Nation consistently uses Phra Merumas (without a space), likewise for the Nikkei Asian Review and Pattaya Mail. South China Morning Post uses Phra Merumat. The Bangkok Post is rather inconsistent and uses both Phra Merumat and Phra Meru Mas. So does the Phuket News. These are just a few examples from the top of Google News searches. Wikipedia's practice has been to default to the RTGS when there's no commonly accepted spelling of a word, which is why I elected to use merumat in the article. I'd like to hear further input from other editors on whether merumas should be regarded as the clearly more common usage.
 * Regarding capitalisation, we need to make a distinction between general things (described with common nouns) and mentioning specific, named things (using proper nouns). So whether we choose the merumat or merumas spelling, it should be uncapitalised when used to describe crematoria in general. When mentioning the one built for a specific king, it may be appropriate to capitalise the word if most sources treat it as a proper noun (and also include the prefix Phra in this case, since it's part of the name). This seems to be the case at least for King Bhumibol's funeral, so I'll adjust the usage accordingly.
 * Also, thanks for the suggestions. --Paul_012 (talk) 21:28, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
 * @Paul 012 Dear Paul I have added the term of usage from the Book from the The Committee on Public Relations for the Royal Cremation for His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and here the final conclusion I have found to present to you about what I had revised on word Phra Merumas and you had undid what I have done http://kingrama9.th/MassMedia/EBookEN#../assets/custom/ebook/pages/EN/86  I also would like to provide references how to use Phra in above references with additional of Media release from Ministry of Foreign affairs of the kingdom of Thailand. http://www.mfa.go.th/main/en/news3/6885/82380-Permanent-Secretary-for-Foreign-Affairs-presents-C.html as King Bhumibol Adulyadej crematorium ceremony was the memories that remind all Thai peoples about our greatest father so we would like to use the correct version of what we can pay the most respect to our Great King. So if you would like me to add discussion and get consensus from community I will. but I do hope you would accept my references and allow me to correct of those word. Thank you for you kind understanding.  Tris T7 (talk) 15:43, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

more references http://www.kingrama9.th/EN/Palanquins for how to use "Phra" and space thank youTris T7 (talk) 15:47, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Spelling and treatment of Thai royal terms
Per the above discussion, there are two unsettled points:
 * 1) Should the prefixes phra and/or phra boromma be used in the article text when mentioning Thai royal terms? Terms which appear frequently in the article include kot and merumat/men. Should they be phra kot/phra boromma kot and phra merumat/phra men instead? This would reflect actual Thai usage, but as I mentioned above, seems redundant in English, and IMO unnecessarily clutters the text.
 * 2) Which spelling is preferred: merumas/phra merumas, as used in official publications for last year's royal funeral, or merumat/phra merumat, which is the RTGS transcription (preferred by default for terms which have no established English spelling)? As also mentioned above, use by the English-language media isn't consistent.

I'll ask for further input at the WikiProject Thailand talk page and perhaps from some frequent editors. To those invited, please add further comments below. Thank you. --Paul_012 (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Use phra. Phra is what sets apart royal language (ราชาศัพท์) from language for "commoners". May Thai words change their meaning completely when preceded by phra, i.e. พระที่นั่ง พระธาตุ.
 * I'd say follow the official publications, since RTGS is not widely accepted (or even known) in Thailand (except for those who translate traffic signs) and official publications by royal institutions appear to be the most authoritative source.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 19:03, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * The documents provided by the Thai government use "Royal crematorium""and "Phra Meru Mas". The whole WP article is about the royal event, so it is not necessary to use the prefixes "royal" and "phra" again and again. Furthermore, the Thai government is notoriously sloppy in using a systematic transcription method. Therefore words that do not have a well established international transcription should follow the only standardised and internationally recognised transcription system RTGS (or ISO-11940-2). Taking these considerations together, the article should use "crematorium" and "merumat". &minus;Woodstone (talk) 07:47, 23 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Either use the English translation or the full Thai word. Repetition is annoying, but misuse is just plain wrong. This is the English Wikipedia, Thai words and names should be used once, explain in context and an English word (if one exists) used in its stead. The fact that this article has a glossary shows that too many Thai terms is being used, instead of being explained and included in the content of the article. --Sodacan (talk) 13:00, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks all for the input. I don't quite agree that using non-royal versions of terms should be considered misuse—the base words (without phra) are how they appear in the Royal Institute Dictionary; the way I see it, by omitting phra, we are just using the plain forms of the words without royal embellishment. As for the glossary, it is mainly there to keep the Thai script and IPA pronunciation keys out of the way of the article text. Kot, merumat and men are the only terms that appear repeatedly in the text.

That said, we don't seem to have quite a clear consensus here, except perhaps that English terms should be preferred. I had also thought of this, but decided against using crematorium and urn when originally writing the article, because they had potential for confusion. Crematorium usually implies a modern device involving a furnace, which were only introduced in 2008. Some sources use funeral pyre, which is also problematic, because the entire structure isn't burned down. As for urn, it implies a container for ashes rather than an upright coffin. Does anyone have suggestions for alternatives? --Paul_012 (talk) 08:41, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Photo ID
Yourlocallordandsavior, thanks for flagging the image. I did see the confusion mentioned in the source article, and from what I found then, it was clearly not Second King Pinklao's royal pyre, the spire of which is quite distinctly a more tapered shape (see the photo in the gallery). However, I missed that the image in question is actually of the royal pyre of Queen Sunanda. This is clearly described as such in this book by Naengnoi Saksri, as shown in this thread on the Reurnthai.com forums.

I've replaced the image with the one from John Thompson's collection. Unfortunately, this image is also widely misattributed as Pinklao's pyre, including in the 2016 Thomson exhibition, though the analysis in this thread makes it clear that it's Mongkut's. Forum posts aren't considered a reliable source, though, and I'm not sure whether the book actually contains this photo (it would be incorrect to cite it if not), so I'm afraid I can't provide a clean citation just yet. --Paul_012 (talk) 15:47, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Very much appreciate the response Paul_012. Do you know what are the rules regarding cropping or rotating images taken by photographers? Would I be able to do the same with the new image? Yourlocallordandsavior (talk) 20:54, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Images hosted on Commons must be freely licensed or in the Public Domain, so all kinds of editing is permitted provided the licensing and attribution requirements are satisfied according to the licence specified on the image page. While minor corrections may be saved as a newer version under the same file name, more significant edits such as cropping that changes the image composition should be uploaded under a new, separate title, especially for historical images such as this. The Crop Tool gadget can help automate the process; it can be enabled in the Commons user preferences, IIRC. --Paul_012 (talk) 02:07, 7 January 2022 (UTC)