While kinship terms continued to be used, a royal vocabulary known as "raja-sap" (Thai: ราชาศัพท์; RTGS: Rachasap, also spelt rajasap and ratchasap) emerged.
[4] Raja-sap, an honorific register, was created as a way for commoners and aristocrats alike to talk to and about the king of Thailand.
The Bangkok period saw even greater expansion of the raja-sap as it became the formal, or polite, way to address all peoples or topics.
Specifically, lexical items from honorific registers replaced native Thai pronouns, resulting in an entirely new set of pronominal forms.
[5] By the end of World War II, popular media used the most informal term for the king, nai luang.
[5] In the 1960s, raja-sap was revived by royalists as an anchor for the Thai monarchy, alongside court customs like mandatory prostration to the royal family, which had officially ended during the reign of Chulalongkorn.
The clerical vocabulary, also composed mainly of borrowings from Khmer, enabled the common people to communicate with and about monks.
Lexical items from standard Thai, royal vocabulary, and clerical vocabulary are shown side by side in the table below: Thai exhibits pronoun avoidance, often using kinship or status terms instead, particularly for social equals or superiors.
Personal pronouns may make the following semantic distinctions:[7] Kinship terms are used pronominally to elevate or demonstrate solidarity with an addressee.
[8] Speakers may demonstrate additional respect by adding the polite title khun (คุณ) before any kinship term.
Thanphuying (ท่านผู้หญิง /tʰâːn pʰûː jǐŋ/) and khunying (คุณหญิง /kʰūn jǐŋ/) were originally titles for wives of nobles of chaophraya and phraya rank, respectively.