Practice: what to call people
What you will be able to do
Choose the kinship term, title or name for anyone you deal with in a day — a waiter, a landlord, a doctor, a monk, an official, a stallholder — and know when a role outranks an age, when a name outranks both, and which name you were actually given.
Thai speakers do not reach for a word meaning "you". They use a kinship term or a title instead: older sibling, younger sibling, auntie, uncle, doctor, teacher, official. The word settles the relative age and standing of the two of you before anything else gets said. And one rule sits above the age rule: a role beats an age, so a title in the room wins even when the person holding it is visibly younger than you.
What do you call her?
the doctor seeing you at the clinic looks about twenty-eight, and you are fifty
Role beats age. A title that comes with the job wins even when its holder is visibly younger than you, so a doctor is คุณหมอ (khun mǎw) in a hospital or a clinic whatever her year of birth. น้อง is for a younger person with no title in the room — the waiter, the shop assistant, the intern, the delivery rider — and used here it does not read as a foreigner's slip, it reads as a comment on her standing. พี่ is wrong in both directions at once: she is younger, and it claims a closeness you do not have with a doctor you have just met. ท่าน (thâan) is for genuinely high rank, a judge or an ambassador or a senior monk, and aimed at an ordinary person it comes out sarcastic.
How do you address him?
the monk collecting alms outside your building looks about nineteen
For monks the word tracks seniority rather than the robe alone, and หลวงพี่ (lǔang-phîi) is the young monk, which is most of the ones you will meet. หลวงพ่อ (lǔang-phâw) is the older monk or the abbot of a temple, so it overshoots by decades here, and หลวงปู่ is further up again. น้อง puts a monk on the junior side of an age line, which is the slip that stings even between laymen. คุณ is the office and first-meeting word and has no place in this exchange at all — he will call himself อาตมา (aa-dtà-maa) and call you โยม (yoom), which is simply the word for a lay person.
Where do you hear a name in this frame?
นางสาวมาลี ศรีสุข
นาย, นาง and นางสาว are legal vocabulary printed on ID cards and contracts, and queue systems and public announcements read straight off the ID with the full name attached. Learn the sound of your own name in that frame, because it is often the only warning that your turn has come. Nobody addresses anybody this way in conversation: the colleague would say คุณมาลี, first name only, the friend would use her ชื่อเล่น (chêu-lên), and the stallholder would use พี่ or that same nickname. The surname in particular is not conversational currency — it comes back only in writing, on the envelope and in the opening line of a letter.
How do you open?
the lease names your landlord as สมชาย ใจดี, and you are ringing him for the first time
คุณ goes in front of a first name, and a first phone call is exactly where คุณ belongs — no age information, no relationship yet, nothing to guess at. คุณใจดี attaches it to the family name, which marks you instantly as a foreigner reading off a form; Thai surnames arrived by law long after the language had settled, they are long, they are close to unique per family, and out loud they are simply not used. นายสมชาย is the ID-card form: right on the contract, wrong in your mouth. พี่ใจดี is wrong twice over, because a kinship term takes a first name or a nickname, and พี่ is a step you have not earned on a first call.
What has she given you?
a new colleague introduces herself with one syllable that appears on no document you have seen
Every Thai has a ชื่อเล่น (chêu-lên), given in infancy and usually one syllable, and that is the name in daily use — by parents, friends, colleagues and very often the boss. Beer, Golf, Bank, Ice and May are ordinary examples, and they are not shortenings of anything. The ชื่อจริง (chêu-jing) on the ID card surfaces at the hospital, at Immigration and in formal writing, and that is not what you were just handed. Family names are not used between colleagues at all. Nor is it a title: titles are words like หัวหน้า and อาจารย์, which describe a job. Nicknames combine with the kinship word rather than replacing it, so she becomes พี่ or น้อง with that syllable attached, or คุณ plus the syllable in the office. Offer one of your own back — a three-syllable European first name is genuine work for a Thai colleague.
Which word is the safe bet?
the woman selling you fruit could be in her fifties or her sixties, and you honestly cannot tell
Stay on พี่ with any woman until she is unmistakably of your parents' generation. ป้า (bpâa) is riskier than it looks, because a woman who still thinks of herself as พี่ hears it as being retired early, and the seller who beams at พี่ can visibly cool at ป้า; when you do switch, คุณป้า softens it. Men need no such caution, which is why ลุง is safe where ป้า is not. น้อง puts a woman older than you below you, and that is the one slip that actually stings. ยาย (yaai) is a grandmother word, kept for the visibly very old, where it sounds affectionate rather than commercial.
Where does this word belong?
อา
Inside a real family อา (aa) is your father's younger sibling, and outside the family the word stays largely within families and Chinese-Thai households — so as a stranger you are better off leaving it alone until you hear it used around you. Its partner น้า (náa), the mother's younger sibling, behaves quite differently: it is heard constantly with strangers, a woman at a stall or a driver in her forties, and lands as a gentler, warmer step above พี่. A man older than you at a stall is ลุง or พี่, depending on how much older. The grandparents' generation has its own closed set, ปู่ and ย่า on the father's side, ตา and ยาย on the mother's. And when you cannot place someone at all, the answer is not another kinship word but no word: build the sentence without one and finish with ครับ or ค่ะ.
Who does this word cover?
ช่าง
ช่าง (châang) covers anyone who fixes things and works as an address on its own — ช่างครับ to the aircon technician, or พี่ช่าง if he is older than you. The man on the gate is ยาม (yaam), though almost everyone calls him พี่ or ลุง according to his age, which is friendlier and gets the gate opened faster. The person who runs your section is หัวหน้า (hǔa-nâa), and that replaces คุณ once someone is your direct superior, whatever their age. A boss or manager spoken about rather than to is เจ้านาย (jâo-naai) or ผู้จัดการ (phûu-jàt-gaan).
Which word never misfires?
you are at the land office, the man behind the counter has no badge you can read, and you need his attention
เจ้าหน้าที่ (jâo-nâa-thîi), literally the official, is the default at Immigration, the land office, the district office and the bank, and it works as an address on its own when you have no name to use. Where there is a badge, คุณ plus that first name is a step warmer, and if the queue is friendly and he is around your age พี่ often gets you further — but เจ้าหน้าที่ is never wrong. ท่าน is reserved for the person the officers themselves stand up for, so aimed at the clerk it reads as sarcasm rather than as extra respect. หัวหน้า is the head of your own section, not of his. อาจารย์ belongs to university teaching and to nobody behind a counter.
What does that tell her?
you have rented from her for two years and she has been up to fix things twice, but you still address her exactly as you did on the first phone call
คุณ, used on its own and repeated through a relationship, does one specific thing: it holds the person at arm's length. That is correct and unremarkable with a stranger at a counter, but with a landlord you have dealt with for two years it reads as coldness, and it tells her you intend to keep the relationship at contract distance — a poor position from which to ask about the water heater. It is not a mark of respect, since คุณ signals only that the relationship is not a family-shaped one; the word for rank is ท่าน and it is not for her. It cannot mean you have lost her name, because คุณ normally arrives with the first name attached. And it is the opposite of a step closer: once she has been in your flat twice she is พี่, or พี่ plus her nickname. Switch, and stay switched.
How bad is it?
you called a man น้อง and he turns out to be five years older than you
พี่ and น้อง are not about absolute age but about which of you is older, so putting an older man on the junior side of that line lowers him in front of whoever is listening. The two errors are not equally expensive: calling someone slightly younger พี่ is at worst a small over-politeness, and it is exactly what service staff do to customers all day long, whereas น้อง aimed upward is the one slip that actually stings. Nor does it get filed under foreigner's Thai — the word choice reads as a judgement about standing rather than as a grammar mistake, which is why it lands differently from a mangled tone. When you cannot tell, guess พี่.
Which word says you know the neighbourhood?
an older woman who has run the same noodle stall in a Chinese-Thai market since before you moved in
เจ๊ (jée) is the word for an older woman running a stall or a shop in Chinese-Thai families and markets, especially in Bangkok, and using it with the woman who has sold you noodles for a year signals that you know where you live. เฮีย (hia) is the same register but for a man, so it puts her in the wrong seat entirely. อาม่า (aa-mâa) and อากง (aa-gong) are grandmother and grandfather in those same families, which places her in a household rather than behind her own counter. ยาย is the Thai maternal grandmother, kept for the visibly very old, and it sounds affectionate rather than commercial.
What do you call the person at the front?
you want to ask a question in a university lecture hall
อาจารย์ (aa-jaan) is the university-level word and the more respectful of the two, and a lecture hall takes it. ครู (khruu) is for school teachers and for whoever is teaching you Thai at a language school; aimed at a professor it puts her a rung down. หัวหน้า is the person who runs your section at work and has nothing to do with a lecture. คุณ steps around a title that is standing right in front of you, and a role beats both an age and a name: wherever there is a title in the room, the title is the word.
A Thai you met ten minutes ago asks this. Why so early?
อายุเท่าไหร่ครับ
The word he needs for you is a kinship term, and every one of them carries the relative age of the two of you, so until the answer is known he has nothing to call you and the conversation cannot really start. It is not nosiness and it is not a remark about your appearance; answer it plainly, and you are entitled to ask straight back, พี่อายุเท่าไหร่ครับ, after which both of you can stop hedging. His particle is not what he is settling — ครับ and ค่ะ are chosen by the speaker's own gender and do not move with your age. And nothing in the question is a check on your right to be where you are.
Common mistake
The commonest mistake by far is treating คุณ as the everyday word for "you" and aiming it at everybody — the waiter, the driver, the neighbour, the landlord. It is grammatically correct every time and socially wrong most of the time, because it holds people at a formal distance they did not ask for. Fix it with a default: พี่ for any adult who might plausibly be older than you, น้อง only for someone clearly younger who has no job title in the room, ลุง and ป้า for your parents' generation, and คุณ kept for first meetings, phone calls, offices and writing — always in front of a first name and never a surname. Do not overcorrect into the opposite error either: calling someone older than you น้อง is the one slip that actually stings.
Next: How to address people