Do Thais often write about this subject?

Here’s an excerpt of a lengthy post I wrote for my blog in 2007, but never ended up posting, because it wasn’t complete:

[It started by giving more lengthy history of the word 'farang']

Now on to ขี้นก. It’s clipped from ฝรั่งขี้นก. Yes, in a sense, this literally means “bird crap farang,” but this is a misinterpretation. In fact, ฝรั่งขี้นก is a specific variety of the guava, with red flesh on the inside. The origin of the term in Thai, as the story goes, is that when a bird would eat guava seeds, the seeds would pass through the bird’s system. And when the bird poops out these seeds, the plants that grew from them had red flesh. Now, obviously that’s just a story, but it came to have a figurative meaning in 19th and 20th century Thailand, when Westerners began to live in Siam in greater numbers. The phrase ฝรั่งขี้นก was applied by Thais to other Thais–those who were seen as being overly Westernized. They tried to look like the ฝรั่ง, but inside, they were still Thai. Same on the outside, different color on the inside. In this sense, it meant something like a “fake” ฝรั่ง. For many older Thais, this is still the meaning ฝรั่งขี้นก holds today.

The way this came to mean “undesirable Westerner” today is a progression of a couple more steps. ฝรั่งขี้นก began to be used derisively of other Thais. Instead of simply someone who tried it act like the farang, it came to mean a bad mannered Thai, especially one who abandoned Thai ways and traditions in favor of Western ones. From there, it began to be applied to bad-mannered Westerners. Coupled with the recent misunderstanding that Westerners are called ฝรั่ง after the guava fruit, the meaning has been reanalyzed (perhaps by Westerners who didn’t know the origin of the term) to mean a guava with bird crap on it–a dirty guava, an undesirable guava. Hence, a dirty or undesirable Westerner.

Hugh, as you can tell from this account, it was my impression that the ฝรั่งขี้นก name originates because of a popular belief that passing through the bird’s system causes a normal ฝรั่ง seed to become a ฝรั่งขี้นก seed. That isn’t actually possible, of course, but it’s certainly possible that that’s what people believed. I’m still lacking evidence for this etymology, though. It’s just anecdotal. But it makes sense to me.
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