Thai kings are called Rama because a later king studied in England
The founder of Thailand's ruling Chakri dynasty never called himself Rama I. Thai history books name him after a Buddha statue, Phutthayotfa Chulalok. The numbered Rama title came from a descendant educated in England, who realized Westerners stumbled over Siamese royal names and simply assigned each king an ordinal.
He was born Thongduang in 1737, in the Ayutthaya kingdom, to a court official of Mon descent and a mother from a wealthy Hokkien Chinese family. He served as a royal page, where he befriended a boy named Sin, spent a customary spell as a monk at 21, and became deputy governor of the frontier town of Ratchaburi. In 1767 Burmese invaders destroyed Ayutthaya, and Siam splintered among warlords.
Sin, now known as Taksin, rallied forces, recaptured the old capital within a year and crowned himself king at Thonburi in 1768. Thongduang and his brother Bunma became his best generals. Rising through a string of titles to Chaophraya Chakri, he fought the Burmese, brought Cambodia to heel and in 1778 took the three Lao kingdoms of Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Champasak, becoming the first vassal granted a rank meaning Great King of War.
In 1781 a rebellion deposed Taksin while Chakri was campaigning in Cambodia. He hurried back, crushed the rebels and crowned himself on 6 April 1782; sources disagree about whether Taksin was sent to a monastery or executed. The new king moved the capital across the Chao Phraya River to a fresh site he named Rattanakosin, keeping place of the Emerald Buddha, which grew into Bangkok. He repelled the Burmese–Siamese War of 1785 to 1786, the last major Burmese assault on Siam.
His reign revived Siamese culture after Ayutthaya's collapse and bound Buddhism tightly to the monarchy. By his death in 1809 Siamese influence reached the Shan States, the northern Malay Peninsula and the Annamite Range. He fathered 42 children. His grandson, not wanting to be remembered as the last reign, dedicated two Buddha statues at Wat Phra Kaeo to his predecessors, which is how the founder got his posthumous name. Thailand's cabinet added the epithet the Great in 1982.
Source: Rama I
