Questions & Answers about เขา ชื่อ อะไร ครับ
Why is the word for "what" at the end of the sentence?
In Thai, question words like อะไร (what) usually go at the very end of the sentence. Instead of building the sentence like "What is his name?", Thai speakers structure it as "He name what?".
The translation says "his", but doesn't เขา just mean "he"?
เขา is a versatile pronoun that can mean he, she, or they, depending on who you are talking about. Also, Thai doesn't always need separate possessive words like "his" or "her". In this structure, เขา acts as the subject, so it is literally asking "He is named what?".
Why isn't there a word for "is" in this sentence?
The word ชื่อ is very flexible. It acts as both the noun "name" and the verb "to be named". Because of this, the sentence already has an action word built in and doesn't need an extra "is".
Since we are asking about a man, do I always use ครับ at the end?
You use ครับ because you, the speaker, identify as male, regardless of who you are talking about! If a female speaker asked this exact same question about a man, she would use her own polite particle, คะ, instead.
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