Names
The etymology of the word Lao is uncertain, although it may be related to tribes known as the Ai Lao (Lao: ອ້າຽລາວ, Isan: อ้ายลาว, Chinese: 哀牢; pinyin: Āiláo, Vietnamese: ai lao) who appear in Han Dynasty records in China and Vietnam as a people of what is now Yunan Province. Tribes descended from the Ai Lao included the Tai tribes that migrated to Southeast Asia. The English word Laotian, used interchangeably with Lao in most contexts, comes from French laotien/laotienne. The Lao people, like many other Tai peoples also refer to themselves as Tai (Lao: ໄທ, Isan: ไท, IPA: tʰáj) and more specifically Tai Lao (ໄທລາວ, ไทลาว). In Thailand, the local Lao people are differentiated from the Lao of Laos and by the Thais by the term Thai Isan (Lao: ໄທຍ໌ອີສານ, Isan: ไทยอีสาน, IPA: i: să:n), a Sanskrit-derived term meaning northeast, but 'Lao' is still used.
Read more about this topic: Lao People
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“A name? Oh, Jesus Christ. Ah, God, I’ve been called by a million names all my life. I don’t want a name. I’m better off with a grunt or a groan for a name.”
—Bernardo Bertolucci (b. 1940)
“And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think. And so on for all the other things which made merry with my senses. Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, “just in case” in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)