Akha woman weaving in Ban Nammat Gao
The woman of the house shown in Picture 3, sitting underneath the house weaving.
This village at the time grew its own cotton, which was spun with a hand spindle (Picture 6), woven on a simple loom, and dyed before making it into their very distinct traditional costume.

I asked, via my guide for the name of the lady (Mrs Boudzou ) Initially I got no answer, then she said something we couldn't understand. I first interpreted it as "Ajo", and repeated that to confirm, but she didn't respond to my question. After some more confusion, her younger daughter came forward, and pronounced her mother's name was Chito. I later understood it is not apprpriate for an Akha woman (or anyone Akha?) to give their name themselves to an outsider. But it was quite OK for her daughter to give pronounce her mothers name. From then on, I would while taking portraits always ask one of the bystanders to speak the name of the subject into my taperecorder.However, when I returned two months later with a tape recorder, and verified the names of the people I photographed, her name was given to me by the village headman as "Boudzou" My assumption at present is that maybe Chito is the family name, and Boudzou her 'first' name. (or vice versa)
Mrs Boudzou lived with her family in a house next to the tourist accomodation in BNG. On my first visit to the village, I had in the early morning photographed her daughters winding cotton thread on a large frame, ready to be put on the loom. I had on this visit given them some of these photographs back. In the afternoon of my second day at BNG, I approached Ms Boudzou and asked her if I could photograph her working at her loom. It was set up underneath the house, with a very long warp, stretching almost the length of the house. Later, I asked and obtained permission to take some photographs of the interior of her house.

Comment added by "cat" on 15/8/2010:

Heard that it isn't appropriate to ask people directly for their name, but perfectly fine to ask their family members instead. Anyway like in many Asian societies, we just refer to people as [insert name]'s father/mother/husband/wife even if we know their names.

Some Akha people I know have more than one given Akha name, am not sure why. Maybe because there can be as many as more than 10 guys in the same village with the same given name? Also, many who go to government schools (& some who work in cities) will take on a Thai name too, perhaps because of discrimination against hilltribe people.

All the Thai Akha women I know have first/given names starting with Ah, Mi or Bu (romanised as Bou in Laos). Almost all guys I know have first names starting with Ah, a few (of very old men) start with Bo or Go.

Akha people also have clan names, & many in Thailand use that as their family name/surname when asked to come up with one for official paperwork e.g. ID cards. Those I've come across start with Choe (also spelt Cher or Cheu), Ah, Mi (also spelt as Me), Ma, Lay (or Leh), Ka, etc.

From the first ancestor (Sm Mi O) up to the 22nd generation, names appear to be 3 syllables. Beyond that it seems like 2-syllable names became the norm, at least for Thai Akha.