Why Vientiane means the city of "Sandal wood" ?

Date: Sep 19, 2008

Why Vientiane means the city of "Sandal wood" ?

TSP · Senior Member

Anonymous wrote:
Vientiane actually means "The city of Sandal wood"

Are you sure your interpretation is correct?
Why don't you put like "Moon city", or "Moonland"?

biggrin

-- Edited by TSP at 06:13, 2008-09-19

Date: Sep 19, 2008

If you don't want Vientiane to be the sandal wood, then you can call it: Vientiane is the city of the scent wood or the city of the aromatic wood.

Date: Sep 19, 2008

Vientiane (pronounced /vjɛnˈtjɑːn/, Lao ວຽງຈັນ Viang-chan IPA: [wíaŋ tɕàn]) is the capital city of Laos, situated in the Mekong Valley. It is also Laos's largest city. The estimated population of the city is 200,000 (2005) while the number of people living in the Vientiane metropolitan area (the entire Vientiane Prefecture and parts of Vientiane Province) is believed to be over 730,000. Vientiane is located at 17°58' North, 102°36' East (17.9667, 102.6). ^[1]

Sri Sattanak, or Sisattanak (Lao: ສີສັດຕະນາກ), is a former name of Vientiane. It is often confused with Sri Sattanakanahut, the Pali name of Lan Xang, the Kingdom of the Million Elephants. Sisattanak now is the name of one of the five districts of the city Vientiane.

Origin of the name

The name of the city is derived from Pali, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism. Its original meaning is "royal sandalwood grove" or "city of sandalwood", this tree being highly valued in classical India for its fragrance. In modern Lao, the meaning of Vientiane is ambiguous, and is often mistakenly believed to mean "city of the moon", because the words for 'moon' and 'sandalwood' are written and pronounced identically. However, the name in Thai, เวียงจันทน์, retains the etymologically correct spelling, and clearly indicates "city of sandalwood" as the meaning. The romanized spelling "Vientiane" is of French origin, and reflects the difficulty the French had in pronouncing the hard "ch" sound in the Lao word; a common English-based spelling is "Viangchan", or occasionally "Wiangchan".

Hope this answered your question biggrin biggrin biggrin

TSP · Senior Member

Anonymous wrote:

In modern Lao, the meaning of Vientiane is ambiguous, and is often mistakenly believed to mean "city of the moon", because the words for 'moon' and 'sandalwood' are written and pronounced identically.
Hope this answered your question

People can write whatever they want about Vientiane, no doubt about that.
I don't mean I don't believe them or believe.

Having Looked at dictionary, I know that "sandalwood" is the hard light-coloured wood of a S Asian or Australian tree, which is used for carving and for incense, and which yields an aromatic oil used in perfumes, meaning "Mai Kean Chan" in Lao language.

Reference:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sandalwood

Date: Sep 19, 2008

I don't see we have many sandalwood trees in Laos

eye_sky · Guru

that was a very complete expanation on the origin of the name "Vientiane", thanks to anonymous. I've always thought it sounded very european, very elegant.

http://eye-in-the-blue-sky.blogspot.com/2008/09/bangkok-not-dangerous-rich-city-vibe.html