Based on the data of village names in Chiang Mai Province surveyed in 1980, 1990 and 1998, this study aims to analyze the structure of village names in Chiang Mai Province, characteristics of culture reflected by the names, the modification of the names, and the factors related to it. The hypotheses of this study are: (1) the structural patterns of the village names in Chiang Mai Province are diverse and normally reflect outstanding features of ethnic groups; (2) the patterns in the data of 1980 reflect more features of ethnic groups than in those of 190 and 1998; (3) the village names reveal the structural modification more than other types of modification; (4) the modification of village names are caused by three factors; linguistic, social and political factors. The result of the analysis shows that there are three structural patterns which are ordered from the one with the highest frequency of occurrence to the lowest; (1) geographical words + (specification) + (location/ description) (2) proper name (3) community words + (community specific names). As for the analysis of culture reflected by village names, eight characteristics of Chiang Mai culture are found: the settlement by rivers, dwelling near woodland, living in a highland area, the diversity of plants, the specification of direction or location of villages, the importance of temples and religion, the variety of ethnic groups and the development of communities. In addition, the analysis of linguistic modification of village names reveals that they have been modified in the ways ordered from the one with the highest frequency of occurrence to the lowest: lexical (e.g. ka:t[superscript 3] khi:[superscript 5] lek[superscript 2] > tala:t[superscript 2]), orthographic (e.g. pa:[superscript 3] huak[superscript 4] > pa:[superscript 2] ruak[superscript 2]), and structural modification. As for the factors causing their modification, the data collected from interviewing residents and district officers in Chiang Mai province demonstrate four factors: linguistic, geographical, social, and political factors.
