Bât Nôkôr Réach
national anthem of Cambodia
The "Song of the Royal Kingdom" (Khmer: បទនគររាជ, romanized: Bât Nôkôr Réach, pronounced [ɓɑt̚ nɔkɔ́ː‿ɾiə̯c̚]) is the national anthem of Cambodia. It is based on a Cambodian folk tune and was written by Chuon Nath.
History
The "Song of the Royal Kingdom" originated from a folk poetry usually performed with chapei in ancient era for storytelling and to disclose any recent events.
The music of the "Song of the Royal Kingdom" was composed between 1938 and 1939 by Prince Norodom Suramarit during the reign of King Sisowath Monivong with help of J. Jekyll and François Perruchot, the Royal Palace's musical instructors. The lyrics were not finished until 20 July 1941 by Choun Nath, a few months after King Norodom Sihanouk's coronation. In the same year, it was adopted then reconfirmed in 1947 as a national anthem for the country.
In 1970, the monarchy was abolished by the Khmer Republic, thereby replacing the state's national anthem as well. After the communists' victory in 1975, former royalist symbols, including the "Song of the Royal Kingdom", were reinstated for a short while. The Khmer Rouge then replaced it with "Glorious Seventeenth of April" in January 1976. After the royalist party FUNCINPEC defeated the former communists (Cambodian People's Party) in the 1993 elections, the royalist state anthem was restored.
“Bât Nôkôr Réach” enters the record as national anthem of Cambodia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nôkôr, Réach and national can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q631618. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1939, 1941 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bât Nôkôr Réach” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.