Siam was just a much different name for what's now referred to as Thailand. The Siamese are the people who live there, though they're never ever called as such any longer.
The most current and right clarification concerning the Tai people's beginnings claims that Guangxi, instead of Yunnan, is the Tai motherland. Today, Guangxi is home to a big population of Tai people referred to as the Zhuang. According to the Khun Borom folklore, Tai people who were not affected by the Chinese settled in what's now Biên Ph in modern Vietnam around 700 AD. Pittayawat Pittayaporn (2014) assumed that this movement occurred at the time of the 8th and 10th centuries, based upon layers of Chinese loanwords in proto-Southwestern Tai and other historic information. Chinese growth and mistreatment could have triggered Tai-speaking tribe to travel southwestward down rivers and over lower enters Southeast Asia.
Thailand is a fascinating country, with its own culinary arts, culture, history, royalty, infrastructure, and influence on the world. To learn more about these “Thai” people before they were called Thai, when they were Siamese, is to learn about those people's roots.
