Kham

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /kʌm/
• Homophones: come, cum
• Rhymes: -ʌm

Borrowed from Tibetan ཁམས (khams).

Kham

1. One of the three traditional regions of Tibet, covering a land area largely divided between eastern parts of the Tibet Autonomous Region, western parts of Sichuan, and smaller parts of Qinghai and Yunnan.
   • 1996, Whitney Stewart, “The Chinese Takeover”, in The 14th Dalai Lama: Spiritual Leader of Tibet‎^[1], Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 86:

     In the summer of 1956, Chinese troops bombed a large monastery in the eastern Kham region. The Chinese had begun to destroy the religious and cultural artifacts of Tibet.

   • 2008 August 21, “China to crack down on use of leanness enhancers in cattle and sheep”, in Reuters‎^[2], archived from the original on 17 May 2022, Top News‎^[3]:

     The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader told the French newspaper Le Monde that the army opened fire during a protest in the eastern Tibetan region of Kham on Monday. […]
     “We know about disturbances in the Kham region. But we do not have any details or figures about injuries or deaths,” said the aide, Chhime Chhoekyapa, in the northern town of Dharamsala. […]
     “The military presence in Tibet is old, but the frenzy of new construction in the Amdo and Kham regions makes me say that this colonisation by the army is designed to last,” he said.

   • 2011 February 23, Adrienne Woltersdorf (sb), “Tibetans searching for a future beyond the Dalai Lama”, in Thomas Baerthlein, editor, Deutsche Welle‎^[4], archived from the original on 25 May 2021, Asia‎^[5]:

     For Samdhong Rinpoche, this tour around the world is also his last trip as PM, now that his term is over and cannot be extended. He has decided to take his future after March 20 as it comes. If he could do what he wanted, he would go back to his home monastery in Kham, where he has not returned since 1959 and where he used to sit under the trees and meditate as a young man. He said, "they are wonderful and they are still standing."

   • 2021 July 12, Stuart Butler, “Scattered Among the Himalaya, Glimpses of a Changing Tibet”, in The New York Times‎^[6], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12 July 2021‎^[7]:

     Much of what is today the mountainous western part of China’s Sichuan Province was, before the 1950 takeover, politically and culturally a part of Tibet, known as Kham. […]
     While the arrival of thousands of international tourists brings environmental and social changes, it has also allowed families to remain in the mountains and to profit off the nature around them and Tibetan culture.
     A case in point would be the nomadic Tibetan family I met on the grasslands of the Kham region, who, working side by side with a local guesthouse, were offering tourists the chance to stay with them in their traditional yak-wool tent and learn something of traditional Tibetan nomadic life.

Transliteration of Lao ຄຳ (kham).

Kham (plural Khams)

1. A surname from Lao.

• According to the 2010 United States Census, Kham is the 38155^th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 581 individuals. Kham is most common among Asian/Pacific Islander (86.4%) individuals.

• Hanks, Patrick, editor (2003), “Kham”, in Dictionary of American Family Names, volume 2, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 299.
• Kham, Kam at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.
• Saul B. Cohen, editor (1998), “Kham”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[8], volume 2, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 1545, column 3: “Sometimes spelled Kam.”

• HKMA