Muban lists coming?

Google found several Excel sheets at the website of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA), which turn out to be lists of all the villages (muban) together with their geocode. Interesting to read are the comments at the bottom, which (if I did not misunderstood them completely) ask for

1. to check the names of the villages, mark those which are in error in red and state the reason why the name was or needs to be changed
   ตรวจสอบความถูกต้องของข้อมูลจำนวนและชื่อหมู่บ้าน โดย "หมู่บ้าน" ให้หมายถึงเฉพาะหมู่บ้านที่ยังคงมีการแต่งตั้งตำแหน่งกำนัน ผู้ใหญ่บ้าน ฯลฯ ตามกฎหมายว่าด้วยลักษณะปกครองท้องที่ ทั้งนี้ หากมีการแก้ไขเปลี่ยนแปลงชื่อหมู่บ้านให้พิมพ์เป็นตัวอักษรสีแดงพร้อมทั้งระบุเหตุผลในช่อง "หมายเหตุ" ด้วย
   
2. get the coordinates of the central location of the village, usually the house of the village headmen
   พิกัดตำแหน่งของหมู่บ้าน ให้บันทึก ณ บริเวณชุมชนใหญ่ในหมู่บ้าน หรือสถานที่สำคัญของหมู่บ้านซึ่งเป็นที่รู้จักกันโดยทั่วไปในหมู่บ้าน (ยกเว้นที่ทำการผู้ใหญ่บ้าน หรือสถานที่ส่วนบุคคลซึ่งสามารถเปลี่ยนแปลงได้)
   
3. provide these coordinates in the UTM coordinate system
   การบันทึกค่าพิกัด ให้บันทึกในระบบ UTM พื้นหลักฐาน Indian 1975 (แผนที่ 1 : 50,000 ชุด L 7017) โดยบันทึกค่าพิกัดตะวันออก 6 หลัก ค่าพิกัดเหนือ 7 หลัก (ยกเว้นจังหวัดภาคใต้บางจังหวัด ค่าพิกัดเหนือ 6 หลัก)
   
4. list the areas covered by a municipality which can have the post of a village or subdistrict headman get annulled
   คำอธิบาย ตำบล ท หมายถึง ทั้งตำบลนั้นอยู่ในเขต ทน. หรือ ทม. หรือ ทต. ซึ่งได้มีประกาศ มท. ยกเลิกตำแหน่งกำนัน ผู้ใหญ่บ้าน แล้ว
   

Thus these Excel sheets have to processed and filled by the local officers in the province or district. I just hope DOPA will make the resulting sheets public as well, but already these lists are very helpful to fill the village names into my XMLs, and then be able to list the most current number of villages in the Wikipedia articles of the districts.

Google however only finds these sheets for half of the provinces, and according to the editing history stored by Office they were created within the last months. Google does list any pages which actually link to these files which might give more explanation on them, nor have I noticed anything in the announcements on the DOPA website.

I have worked through the file on Nakhon Si Thammarat already, and that gave me several name differences to those I had compiled from various sources (e.g. ThaiTambon or the Gazette announcements). Just listing those for Chulabhorn district
as it has only a few but different kinds of differences

• Mu 2 of Ban Khuan Mut listed as Ban Nai Wang (บ้านในวัง) instead of Ban Na Mo Bun (บ้านนาหมอบุญ)
• Mu 1 of Khuan Nong Khwa spelled บ้านสมควร instead of บ้านสมควน
  
• Mu 4 of Na Mo Bun named Ban Kaho Nuea (บ้านกาโห่เหนือ) instead of Kaho (บ้านกาโห่)
  
• Mu 6 of Na Mo Bun named Ban Huai Kaeo (บ้านห้วยแก้ว) newly created
  
• Mu 4 of Khuan Nong Khwa named Ban Tuan Trab (บ้านควนตราบ) newly created
  
• Mu 4 of Ban Cha-uat named Ban Tha Yang (บ้านท่ายาง) newly created
  

The last three suggest that there are also new announcements for the Royal Gazette in the pipeline, the last village creations were announced in September 2007 more than a year ago.

Confusing Thai administrative structures

It is not only me who got (and still sometimes gets) confused by the administrative structure, and especially the parallel local and central government entities. As so often, Google made me discover the short essay Civil service controls much of regional and local government, which contains several mistakes easily made when not knowing the details. I don't want to ridicule the author for his mistakes, I more like to use it as an example for the difficulties to understand the real structure. When I read that essay, I really needed the "edit" button like in Wikipedia, so I could fix the article myself...

Thailand is divided into 76 provinces (or 'changwat'), which are then grouped together into five regions for administrative purposes. [...]
The 76 provincial governors are appointed by the Ministry of the Interior from the civil service rather than elected, like the French prefect system, except in two cases. The capital city Bangkok is governed by a Metropolitan Authority, headed by an elected Governor. In 1976, the city of Pattaya was also given special administrative area status...

Actually, it's just 75 provinces, as Bangkok has a different status, which as correctly noted includes the elected governor. Yet, Bangkok is quite often miscalled a province, though it is not, it is only at the same administrative level as the other province. However Pattaya is not an exception, since it is not at provincial level, but a special kind of municipality outside the normal thesaban system.

Below this are tambon, loosely translated as communes, of which there are currently 7,254. Larger units (over 10,000 population) are known as Mueang, while other cities (over 50,000 population) are referred to as Nakhon. All of these are further sub-divided into muban (villages), currently 69,307 in number. [...] The 1994 Tambon Council and Tambon Administrative Authority Act and the 1997 constitution state the elected nature of the tambon.

Here the author totally confused the central administrative entity tambon with the municipality type thesaban tambon, and thus includes the other two municipal types thesaban mueang and thesaban nakhon with the subdistricts. And thus also the next sentence is wrong, as especially for the area covered by a thesaban nakhon there usually are no muban anymore. Also the reference to the 1997 constitution has this flaw, but here it is even more easy to get confused - at tambon level the central and local government meet, as the local government entity TAO in most cases cover exactly on tambon. And even more confusing, both the TAO with the chairman are elected, but also the administrator of the central government entity tambon, the subdistrict headman.

A Tambon created twice?

For Surat Thani I am already much further into the past than for most other provinces, so I am now processing creations in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1947 a lot of subdistricts were created all over the country, including 20 in Surat Thani. This massive creation of subdistrict in itself is already interesting - anyone know for the reasons behind it - I noticed on problem there.

On page 2521 of the 1947 announcement (Volume 64, Issue 46 ง, Pages 2507-2533 published on September 30 1947), the subdistrict Thung Tao (ตำบลทุ่งเตา) in Ban Na was created by reassigning the following villages (muban).

• หมู่ที่ 1 โอนจาก หมู่ที่ 7 ตำบลบ้านนาสาร อำเภอบ้านนาสาร (Village 1 reassigned from village 7 of Ban Na San subdistrict)
• หมู่ที่ 2 โอนจาก หมู่ที่ 8 ตำบลบ้านนาสาร (Village 2 reassigned from village 8 of Ban Na San subdistrict)
• หมู่ที่ 3 โอนจาก หมู่ที่ 3 ตำบลลำพูน (Village 3 reassigned from village 3 of Lamphun subdistrict)

Except that there was no subdistrict named Ban Na San - only one named Ban Na and one named Na San, there's nothing special with this one so far.

But, there's another announcement dating from 1938 (Volume 55, Issue ง, Page 3244-3245 published on December 26 1938), in which the two subdistrict Talat Chaiya and Thung Tao are created and a few villages are reassigned between subdistricts. So it's a second time Thung Tao was created, and that time it even had different more villages.

• Village 1,2, and 10 of Tha Ruea
• Village 7 and 9 of Ban Na
• Village 8 of Lamphun

The only reasonable explanation for this would be that this subdistrict was created in 1938, then abolished again and recreated in 1947. But I cannot find any announcement about a abolishing of subdistricts in Surat Thani at that time yet.

Etymology of Thesaban and Thesaphiban

I am sure Rikker on his blog on the Thai language would do a better job than me, but since the simple question whether the correct romanization of the word เทศบาล in the RTGS should be thesaban or thetsaban led to a real gem of etymological discussion on my Wikipedia talk page.

The spelling of the word in Thai will usually tell you which words are pronounced this way. In words like เทศบาล, which we might transliterate (not transcribe) as {thesbal}, the ศ /s/ has a dual role: it acts as the final consonant of the first syllable เทศ (from deśa "country"), pronounced /thet/ in isolation, but ศ /s/ also gives us an implicit /a/ vowel that becomes the linking syllable /sa/ connecting with บาล /ban/ (from pāl "protect").

Thus, the word thesaban (municipality) from its Indic Sanskrit roots means something like "protection of country".

I already was about ask Rikker if the word "thesaphiban" (เทศาภิบาล), used as the common term of all the administrative reforms under Prince Damrong in his time as Interior Minister 1894-1915. The "sa" syllable in the two words is totally different, for thesaban it's a short "a" (อะ), while in thesaphiban it is a long "a" (อา). But actually, the two words are related

Another reason to keep Thesaban occurred to me -- to maintain consistency with Thesaphiban (เทศาภิบาล), from the Indic roots เทศ (deśa) + อภิ (abhi) + บาล (pāl), but due to sandhi (สนธิ) compounding rules it becomes เทศาภิบาล (deśābhipāl, with a long ā vowel), and thus in RTGS must be Thesaphiban, and never *Thetsaphiban. Personally, I'd prefer to maintain consistency between these words with the same roots.

Tej Bunnag gives the etymology of the word thesaphiban in his book "The Provincial Administration of Siam 1892-1915" as follows

The word thesaphiban is compounded from three words of Pali origin, namely thet or thesa meaning ‘country’, aphi meaning ‘in particular' or ‘special’, ban or bala meaning ‘to be in charge of something’, and can be translated literally as ‘to be in special charge of an area of the country’.

Just the original question wasn't solved completely yet - it seems RTGS would suggest the spelling thetsaban, the actually pronunciation is however closer to thesaban.

I cannot recall why I did choose that spelling back then, whether I did not trust the output of the romanization tool by Wirote Aroonmanakun (see also this review in the LearningPost), or I chose the spelling from the ones I saw the web which looked most close to the way RTGS is applied to the non-Sanskrit words.

District creation statistics

Similar to the statistics for the subdistrict creations, I now also coded the same for the districts. For the statistics below I have only used the announcements since 1950, there's a bit higher chance of missing announcements before. And at least two district creations are missing, as I still could not find two announcements dating from 1978.

There were a total of 385 announcements in the Royal Gazette, in which 14 district (Amphoe) and 398 minor districts (King Amphoe). Most of the time it was just one district per announcement, the maximum number of districts per announcement was seven.

The most common number of subdistricts in a newly created district is three (154 times), the mean value is a little bit higher with 3.46. The highest number was 11, which occured at the creation of Singhanakhon district in Songkhla province. In four cases the newly created district consisted of a single subdistrict.

• Mae Poen, Nakhon Sawan
• Soeng Sang, Nakhon Ratchasima
• Than To, Yala
• Pa Daet, Chiang Rai

In almost all cases the new district consisted of subdistricts from a single parent district, only in 6 cases it was amalgamated from two districts, and just once from three - i.e. the creation of Pathum Ratchawongsa, Amnat Charoen.

And finally, not much surprising, the province with most district creations is also the province which has most districts today, Nakhon Ratchasima. A total of 19 districts were added to this province since 1950.

Origin of Surat Thani province

As I am most interested in Surat Thani province, it was this province I tried hardest to find sources on its history. But due to its more complicated history, the English sources I found are somewhat contradicting. It's especially the thesaphiban reforms and its effects on Surat Thani which I am talking about now. At first I will present the history as I right now think is most correct, hopefully I am not too far from reality.

1896 the Monthon Chumphon was created, consisting of the four provinces (Mueang) Chumphon, Lang Suan, Chaiya and Kanchanadit. The center of Kanchanadit was in fact located in Ban Don, the modern-day district Kanchanadit only covers the older location at Tha Thong Mai - the name Kanchanadit was bestowed on Tha Thong during the reign of King Rama V. In October 1899 the Mueang Kanchanadit and Chaiya were merged (Gazette), and the center set to Ban Don but the name Chaiya was retained. 1906 the monthon administration was moved to Ban Don as well. In August 1915 the province was renamed to Surat Thani, while the Monthon was renamed from Chumphon to just Surat (Gazette).

The first two sources I found while researching for the Wikipedia article on the province was the Golden Jubilee Network (Kanchanaphik), which had informative pages on the provinces. Strangely these pages went blank some years before, and apparently no webmaster ever checked and fixed this. So the text I am talking about is only available from archive.org.

Later, it was divided into Chaiya, Tha Thong and Kiri Raj towns which were governed by Nakhon Si Thammarat town. In the reign of King Rama IV, Tha Thong town was moved to Ban Don (present town) and governed by Bangkok. The name Tha Thong was changed to Kanchanadit Town. Due to the change in the country administrative system, King Rama V combined Chaiya, Kanchanadit, Lang Suan and Chumporn together to be called Chumporn . In 1898, the municipal hall was built in Chumporn but it was moved to Ban Don in 1915, in the reign of King Rama VI. This place was re-named “Surat Thani”.

The second one, also not online anymore, was from a site named Goods-th

The Thong and Khiri Rat were annexed to Nakhon Si Thammarat, while Chaiya reported directly to Ayutthaya. After Ayutthaya fell to Burma in 1767, Chaiya fell under Nakhon Si Thammarat. King Rama IV moved the administration and Tha Thong to Ban Don, and renamed it "Kanchanadit". Which was to report directly to Bangkok.
King Rama V In 1896: The regional administration center was established. The so-called Monthon Chumphon looked after Kanchanadit (or Ban Don). Chaiya, and Khiri Ratthanikhom.

So both sources list Khirirat Nikhom as a third province which existed in the area of Surat Thani. However, as the Gazette announcement cited above only lists Kanchanadit and Chiaya, this must have been demoted before. This confusion probably arises due to the fact that Mueang not just named the provinces directly under the central government, but also the minor Mueang which were subordinate of another Mueang.

Even Tej Bunnags "Provincial Administration of Siam" added more confusion, as in Appendix III it lists the provinces within each monthon, and for Chumphon/Surat it says

Chumphon, and then Suratthani, Chaiya,
Kanchanadit, Langsuan

which sounds like there were three - Surat Thani, Chaiya and Kanchanadit.

Another version in Wolf Donner's Five faces of Thailand lists instead another additional Mueang, this time Khiri Wong. On page 464f. it says:

South of Chumphon we find the rather large changwat of Surat Thani with a capital that received its present name from Rama VI meaning "the town of the good people". Originally, this province was part of Nakhon Si Thammarat but it was, towards the end of the last century, separated under the name of Kanchanadit or Ban Don, with the capital of the latter name. Today the changwat encloses the old provinces of Chaiya and Kiriwong and reaches close to the west coast.

My interpretation is however backed by the Thai book "Our Surat Thani", which only talks on the histories of Chaiya and Kanchanadit.

If you're still with me here after all these texts you can imagine how much difficult it often is to write well-researched articles on the Thai provinces or districts in Wikipedia.

Abolish and recreation of Tambon

Similar to the strange announcement on the creation of an already existing subdistrict in Sakon Nakhon, I have now found another such example, this time in Chaiyaphum in 1965. And this time there are two announcements - the first one (Volume 82, Issue 73 ง, Page 2268) which transfers three muban from Non Khun, Khon San district to Nong Khon Thai, Phu Khiao district. And together with this transfer of villages, both subdistricts get abolished (ยุบตำบล), and in the second announcement (Volume 82, Issue 73 ง, Page 2263-2267) the same two subdistricts get created again. Unlike the earlier example, this time the second announcement also includes a renumbering of the villages of Non Khun.

The first announcement also seems to include the reason for this somewhat strange action - I did not notice such a long text in the Sakon Nakhon case. If my wife understood it right, after the transfer of the villages it'd have two subdistrict headmen (Kamnan, กำนัน) as well as subdistrict doctors (แพทย์ประจำตำบล) responsible for the same area, so to get rid of them their post gets nullified by abolishing the subdistrict itself. After the recreation of the subdistricts these posts then could be filled anew. The text says that the Kamnan was also the village headman (Phu Yai Ban, ผู้ใหญ่บ้าน) of one of the three villages taken from Non Khun.

And I found another similar case, as the same happened in Roi Et in 1967 as well. Both Bueng Ngam, Nong Phok district and Nam Kham, Suwannaphum lost one village to a neighboring district. But unlike the case in Chaiyaphum, that time the source subdistricts were abolished (Gazette) and recreated (Gazette), and not the subdistricts which then would have two headmen.