“Sathon” or “Sathorn”? ” “สาธร” or “สาทร”?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes “Sathon” is spelled with an extra “r”, as “Sathorn”? There is a story behind that.

Imagine one day you wake up to find that the government has decided to finally correct a misspelling of your street address,  a spelling that had been in use for over 50 years.

You see, “Sathon” is a name that has been misspelled for many decades, and was on so many street signs, building signs, stationery, contracts, etc. Imagine the Herculean effort required to remove every last added “r”. Would you do it?

Now imagine if “Sathon” were your great grandfather….and it pained you that the entire country, despite your best efforts, continued to misspell his name.  I know it would really annoy me.

It took Luang Sathon’s descendants many decades to make it happen, but the change finally became official in 1999. Good for them.

Although it was a massive pain in the butt for us to change all our company documents, I am happy that the government finally did the right thing.

So, the next time you see “Sathon” and “Sathorn”, know that the resulting confusion actually originates from efforts to do the right thing.