Get some royal glow on the sly
People who've retired to caves might be the only ones who haven't heard about "Suparburut Juthathep", the hit five-part series on Channel 3 tracking the lives of five khunchai (royal descendants) of the fictional Juthathep family. It's been a major topic
The custom on Twitter is to add the title prefix Khunchai to your username. (Another wag recast Miss Sri Siam from the episode “Khunchai Pawornrut” as Miss Sri Sayong, meaning “scary beauty queen”.)
Over on Facebook, the anonymous cartoonist behind Jaytherabbit put a spin on Bangkok Governor MR Sukhumbhand Paribatra’s royal rank. He’s often addressed as Khunchai. “If Khunchai Phuttipat is a dream, then Khunchai Sukhumbhand is the reality,” the Rabbit surmised, earning a giggle from the governor himself.
The series’ success, bolstered by fan chat online, got another boost this week when Chuan Sirinanporn of the Interior Ministry’s Bureau of Registration Administration revealed that many parents are now naming their babies after members of the Juthathep family, more than 1,000 infants in the last two months. That’s where Taratorn, Pawornruj, Puttiphat, Ronnaphee and Ratchanont come from, the last one being the most popular name for a boy at the moment, since he’s the subject of the current episode.
So we have 664 newborn Thais named Ratchanont, another 412 called Putthipat, 142 Tarathorns, 112 Pawornrujs and 26 Ronnaphees. Expect Ronnaphee’s numbers to jump once that character’s episode begins tomorrow, the last in the series. And Chuan reports that another 30 babies have been registered with the first name Juthathep.
So a lot of parents are having fun. What remains to be seen is whether the children, when they get a little older, think there’s any charm in having the name of some posh character in a long-forgotten TV series. They might like it even less if there are five other kids in their class with the same name.
Maybe Jaytherabbit had a good point – the reality is Khunchai Sukhumbhand. They rest of us should look elsewhere.
