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: Laotian People
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“You shall see men you never heard of before, whose names you don’t know,... and many other wild and noble sights before night, such as they who sit in parlors never dream of.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I introduced her to Elena, and in that life-quickening atmosphere of a big railway station where everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished, the exchange of a few words was enough to enable two totally dissimilar women to start calling each other by their pet names the very next time they met.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“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)