Is it Myanmar or is it Burma?

A fine language teacher came my way and provided a new-to-me answer to a common question: is it Myanmar or is it Burma?

This fellow, an anthropologist with an interest in language, says that essentially the two words are the same.

It turns out that the dominant tongue here, spoken by most people as either a first or second language, has both a high form that mainly shows up in formal or literary situations, and a "low" form used for everyday exchanges.

Speakers of the high form, since as far back as anyone can remember, have pronounced the name of this place as “Myan-ma,” with two squeezed-together syllables and without an “r.” The informal form of the language, at some point long ago, began substituting a “b” introductory sound for certain words that had previously begun with “my….” So it was that in colloquial language “Myan-ma” became “Ba-ma.” All along, both names were in use. When the colonizing British showed up, they wrote the everyday name in English as Burma.

Forty years after independence, a new military regime declared that the official English name would thereafter be “Myanmar,” tacking on an “r” to the English spelling as a way perhaps of hinting that the final “a” sound should be lengthened. This declaration took place as part of the junta’s attempt to do away with spellings introduced by colonizers.

Of course things are never that simple.

Political dimensions of the name choice resurfaced. The formal English name and its consequences weren’t brand new debates. This time, not only was the new regime quite unpopular, both inside and outside the country, but it also continued to use the term “Ba-ma” when referring to the country’s majority ethnic group, which the British had spelled Burman. The generals claimed that of the two previously interchangeable place names, their choice was more inclusive of the entire population. “Nonsense,” said many of the minorities in this country where the borders were drawn by outsiders. Even today, thirty years after that decision, no term exists in any of the languages spoken here that includes all of the ethnicities living here. 

The non-Burman third of the population, along with several international human rights groups, suggested that the “new” name simply continued a policy of successive governments to Burmanize the country. My new language teacher friend explains it this way: “It would be as if a new government in Washington, D. C. one day said, ‘We’re no longer the United States of White America; we’re now the United States of Caucasian America.’”