Tricia in Cross Oaks, Texas, says that when she was a child, a family friend fondly called her a nitnoy, meaning “a small person.” U.S. soldiers picked this term in Thailand, where nit noi (นิดหน่อย) means “a little bit.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Nitnoy, a Little Thing”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Tricia, and I am from Cross Oaks, Texas. It’s near Denton.
Okay.
Okay. What’s up?
I was calling because we have a word in my family. Well, it was a nickname that I had growing up, and it came from one of my parents’ friends, who we no longer know. But it was one of their friends that took care of me some when I was young, and they called me a nitnoid. And none of us have any idea where that came from, but it has held on, and now my kids are also nitnoids.
And is that an affectionate term, or is it, do you say that when you get annoyed, or what?
The way we use it, it is an affectionate term, yes.
What’s interesting about this expression is that it’s not English. It originally comes from the language Thai, spoken in Thailand.
Really?
Fascinating.
And in Thai it means small or little. It sounds something like LIT NOI in Thai language.
Oh.
Yeah.
And so it was borrowed by American soldiers who had experiences in Thailand as part of the U.S. Military presence there. Now, some people have tried to connect it to the Vietnam War, but we don’t really find it in print as a term for a person in English until the 1980s. Although, apparently, in the 1970s, the ambassador to Vietnam, Graham Martin, had a poodle who was named Nit Noy.
Fascinating.
Okay, so I do know, well, I was born in 82, so that tracks. And my dad was in the Air Force Reserve. Now, maybe, I mean, I’ll have to ask him. Maybe this was one of his Air Force buddies or something.
It’s possible.
Very possible, yeah. Because the American presence in Vietnam was directly tied to the American presence in Thailand. And we had a presence in Thailand even after the Vietnam War. So it’s entirely possible that anybody who served in one or both of those places might have known the term.
That’s fascinating. Okay, I’ll have to ask about that. You know, we actually have an inside running joke in the family. Whenever my dad came home from one of his deployments, I guess, my mom got a letter that was all in a characterized language. We’re assuming, you know, either, you know, Japanese, Chinese, could have been Thai, I don’t know, something, a different language, and asked my dad about it. And he did not have an explanation for this. So my mom’s explanation is that he just has another family over there. Lots of little nit noise. And so maybe it was Thai. Maybe he has a Thai family.
If you still had that letter, I would love to find out more. It’s so much easier to get a translation these days. So maybe we’ve narrowed it down.
In the U.S. Military, it’s often used to describe something that is seemingly unimportant, but very important to some bureaucrat. So it’s the kind of thing that somebody else considers important, but you consider small and significant. And there’s a notion here in English, people often pick up on the idea of nitpick and annoy. It is not from those words, but it does seem in its usage in English to have borrowed connotations from nitpick and annoy.
Okay.
But again, it’s not related to them. It’s just a coincidence.
Well, thank you guys so much for taking me. I am a nerd right up there with you guys. So thank you guys for continuing it.
One of us.
One of us.
Take care, Tricia.
Thank you so much.
And thank you for reaching out.
Thank you.
All right, bye-bye.
Take care, Tricia.
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