But farang is the catch-all Thai word for westerners, isn’t it? Are they calling us all French?? :eek: 
BTW, I got: France (obvious), Spain (yep, right next door), Chad (always liked the name) and then, after a bit more thought, Greece. I didn’t think of Laos, but it is certainly one syllable.
All the people saying “Eire” is one syllable - I hate to be the bearer (hint!) of bad news, but it has two.
And Wales isn’t a country, in the nation-state sense of the word.
Yes, basically they are. It’s a variation of a word common in this region in many languages. In Malay, it’s ferenghi. As I’ve detailed elsewhere on the Board, it actually comes from – believe it or not – Charlemagne, but the mode of transfer is open to question. What is known for sure is that on Christmas Day, AD 800, Charlemagne crowned himself emperor of all the Christians. This caused a big laugh in the Byzantine Empire, which began referring to all West Europeans as “those crazy Franks,” or French.
That much is pretty well agreed. How it got to Thailand, or Siam, comes in two main versions. One is that the term made it along the Silk Road to China, where instead of using it to refer to West Europeans only, it was used for all Europeans. Since China had been actively sailing throughout the region, even to East Africa, the Malays and Thais probably picked it up from them. This is the version I tend to believe, because when the first Portuguese appeared off the coast of China during the Age of Discovery, the Chinese referred to them by their version of the word.
The other main story is that the Muslim traders brought it with them as they ventured East. There are variations on both these.
The Thais are taught in school – or at least used to be – that it was because the French were the first Westerners with a significant diplomatic presence in the kingdom, in the 17th century. But that’s not true. The Portuguese beat the French by a good 100 years, followed closely by the Dutch. Then the French.
Chad
Spain
France
Guam? Does that count as a country despite being a US possession?
That’s all I can think of, I’m posting.
ETA: Greece! D’oh!!
I’m dumber than a box of dirt.
Before reading the thread, I could only come up with Chad.
How I got to Chad while skipping France and Greece is beyond me.