What's the name...?

[aelf]

East Rhodesia.

Maybe Myanmar, since Burma seems to have a colonial slant to it. I still use Burma anyway, but I'm not using it for any official purpose so I don't care.

 

[Pannonius]

I call it "Burma".

 

[josephstalin]

Either or is fine, they really should decide, not us...

 

[Rossiya]

I use the terms interchangeably. For if we do not have interchangeability, we have nothing. And if we have nothing, we are mere heretics, and thereby not good Christian men.

 

[aronnax]

If they call themselves Bobbyuniporn then ill call them bobbyuniporn

I call them Myammar

 

[LightFang]

All right, thanks for all your input. I see the majority of CFC likes the old name better.

 

[warpus]

Byarmar ?

 

[Rossiya]

And there's me thinkign that the capital of Myanmura was Yangon!

 

[obliterate]

I use them interchangeably; but I like the name Myanmar because it sounds better.

 

[RedRalph]

Myanmar, at least that name was given by locals (however much they are wankers), unlike Burma.

 

[Xyan]

It's rather akin to the Bombay/Calcutta issue. When foreign countries insist on changing place names, I see no reason why we should bother to change our language. After all, we don't call Warsaw "Warsawa", Japan "Nihon", Germany "Deutschland" or China "Zhonguo".

We don't yet. But we ought to.

 

[Xyan]

Naypyidaw matches Myanmar better... If you are seeing the names for the first time, you can believe they are from the same culture.

Naypyidaw and Burma just seems so Elves and Dwarfs...

 

[Old Dog]

Bummer - seems most appropriate.

 

[skyline5k]

Bummer - seems most appropriate.

LOL! Lately, yes.

Was Burma, because of the old Midnight Oil song really, but lately now, Myanmar because of the press coverage after the weather disaster.

 

[~Corsair#01~]

do you still call Beijing Peking?

Well, no. There are two reasons for this:
- I am (or was once, at any rate) learning Chinese and thus the use of a patently incorrect romanisation system simply felt wrong. It certainly didn't help that the system was invented by the French.
- The use of Beijing became common some time ago, while the use of Myanmar/Kolkata etc. are only becoming common now. Familiarity and habits are probably the main reason for why I would use one word over the other.

 

[bhsup]

Why not just declare that the English word "Burma" is the translation of the whatever language they speak word "Myanmar".

It isn't as though Japan sounds anything like Nippon or Germany sounds anything like Deutchland. We're not obligated to take native words and make them fit into English. Sure, it's been done a lot, but it isn't a requirement. We can use our own words if we like to represent something.

 

[El_Machinae]

Quick poll, just for research purposes:

Do you consider the country with the capital of Naypyidaw to be named...

Burma?

or

Myanmar?

I misunderstood the thread. I thought we were saying what we thought the name sounded like. It sounds like a North American aboriginal name to me.

 

[Rossiya]

We're not obligated to take native words and make them fit into English.

Was the irony intended here?

 

[obliterate]

5000 posts!

 

[Virote_Considon]

I use both interchangeably, myself, depending on which word I would rather use at the specific time.