One of the cursorychanges
instituted by the government since the 1988 uprising has
been a long list of roman spelling changes for geographic
names, in a further effort to purge the country of its
colonial past. In most of the name changes, the new
romanised versions bring the names phonetically closer to
the everyday Burmese pronunciation.
Myanmar versus Burma
In 1989 the official English name of the country was
changed from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar, to
conform to Burmese usage. There has been no change in the
Burmese name for the country. Myanmar has, in fact, been the
official name since at least the time of Macro Polo's
13th-century writings; the first Burmese - language
newspaper, published in 1868, was called Myanmar Thandawzin,
translated by the British as Burma Herald. In the country's
1947 Constitution, the Burmese version reads Myanmar, the
English version Burma.
In Burmese literary contexts, the name Myanmar refers to the
whole country, Bamar (from whence the English got Burma)
refers to Burman ethnicity, or to the Burman language. In
everyday parlance, Bamar-pyi (Land of the Burmans) may also
be used to refer to the country. The new government position
finds Myanmar more equitable, since it doesn't identify the
nation with any one ethnic group. If the current military
regime releases control of the government to the National
League for Democracy, however, there's always the
possibility all the names could revert back to their
colonial versions.
Lingustically speaking, the change is quite reasonable, but
it has become something of a political football between the
opposition and the government. The official United Nations
designation is now Myanmar, and Amnesty International uses
this name as well; some English launguage periodicals - such
as Asiaweek - recognise the change, while others (eg Time)
don't.
The 'r' at the end of Myanmar is merely a British English
device used to lengthen the preceding 'a' vowel; it is not
pronounced. State enterprises that use Myanmar in their
titles typically spell the word without an 'r', eg Myanma
Airways, Myanma Five Star Line, Myanma Timber Enterprise so
on .
Myanmar versus Burmese
Officially in post-1989 Myanmar, the word now used to
mean Burmese - referring either ot a citizen of Myanmar or
the language, or to any attribute of the country as a single
entity ( cuisine, culture etc) - is Myanmar. In other words,
it's Myanmar people (or Myanmars), Myanmar language and
Myanmar customs, as in Berber people or Magyar language.
Because of the lack of familiarity with the use of Myanmar
as an adjective however, Lonely Planet is staying with the
word Burmese for references to the people and language, just
as most mid-20th century literature on Thailand continued to
use the term Siamese, even after the name of the country had
been officially changed (by a dictaorship) from Siam to
Thailland in 1949. Bamar will be used to refer to the Burman
ethnic group and to the culsine.
