Talk:Burma/Myanmar

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To determine consensus on this naming issue, a new discussion has been opened here. All involved users are invited to come and lodge their opinions on this issue at the page above, where, 14 days after the first posting, all valid points will be assessed and the consensus will be determined. Thankyou, Atyndall (talk) 11:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

***Please read what has already been said before leaping to express at length your own opinion!***

Contents 1 Textbooks, atlases, and encyclopedias 2 A Piece of Logic... 3 I'm sorry but... 4 It isn't all about politics! 5 Common names vs official names 6 Both Politically Incorrect 7 Burma 8 Usage in English language media 8.1 Media referring to the country as Burma 8.2 Media referring to the country as Myanmar 8.3 Ratios 8.4 Google News Hits 9 Google hits 10 Union of Myanmar 11 CIA World Factbook 12 A bit of an oversimplification, but... 13 My suggestion 14 No widely accepted name = Myanmar 15 Wrong vs Incorrect 16 Iran and Persia 17 Rangoon 18 Why the everyday person isn't reliable on this 19 Reason for the renaming? 20 Can someone summarize the sides in the naming dispute? 20.1 For Burma 20.2 For Myanmar 21 Hold off, then rename 22 Civilization vs. Regime 23 Article Style 24 Sorry 25 Wikipedia Policy 26 Zaire 27 Add "Myanmar" in Parantheses 28 English 29 Liancourt Rocks precedent 30 The name is Myanmar 31 Use Parnentheses 32 There is no argument whatsoever for calling this article 'Burma' 33 Myanmar? No! 34 Check this out: 35 The French Wikipedia 36 Wikipedia Standards 37 Use UN own convention in English 38 ISO 3166 International Standard 39 Let's try to streamline out some of the chaff... 40 De Jure Versus De Facto 41 Straw poll 41.1 Burma option 41.2 Myanmar option 41.3 Comments 42 Sub-Issues 43 "Burma/Myanmar" 43.1 some food for thought 43.2 Countries with different names in English and their native language 44 news database search results 45 Support? 46 Consensus 47 Lazy People 48 MY IDEA 49 Other languages 50 Applying Wikipedia naming conventions 51 Why do we call Zimbabwe Zimbabwe and not Rhodesia 51.1 Myanmar and Burma (Separate Articles) 52 Press Access 53 Name has been changed and the rationale behind it 54 The move 55 The fallacy of Nichalp's move 56 Save Burma!!!!! 57 Unsound arguements and solutions 58 it should be Burma 59 solution 60 why the name Myanmar is resisted 61 missing it 62 Time for mediation/arbitration? 63 Der Spiegel changes back to "Burma." 64 Something serious (and something seriously irrelevant) 65 it is Burma 66 "Inaccuracies perpetuated as history." 67 Voting 68 My opinion 69 Who matters in this debate? 70 The End?

Burmese Reason

The name itself has no problem. The issue is who has the legitimate right to change the name of a country. Military thugs? Hell No! If you want to recognize the name, which was changed by thugs, it's your choice. Thugs accept thugs as true.

The official name of the country, as decided a few years ago by the unpopular, undemocratic, brutal Military Junta who have control at the moment, is 'Myanmar.' This name has also been recognised by the United Nations, but not by many countries, including the US and the UK, who do not recognise the Military Junta's unilateral decision to rename an entire country without consulting the people. The name used by the ordinary people is 'Burma.' The question is, do you go with the name used by the Military dictatorship, or by the Burmese people?81.208.106.64 (talk) 22:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a funny thing to say because the article, references sources saying that the popular name there is something that transliterates to myanmar. It claims that that name has been in use since the 13th century. Robbiemuffin (talk) 17:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

You are right, both names have a history, but "Burma" has always been the name used by the ordinary people when talking about their country. Here is a quote from an interesting BBC article on the topic: They have both been used within Burma for a long time, says anthropologist Gustaaf Houtman, who has written extensively about Burmese politics. "There's a formal term which is Myanmar and the informal, everyday term which is Burma. Myanmar is the literary form, which is ceremonial and official and reeks of government. [The name change] is a form of censorship."[1] Angstriddenyouth (talk) 14:10, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Why do you assume that the Burmese people call it "Burma?" When I visited the country, most of them prefered Myanmar. Not that my personal experiences should dictate Wikipedia's decision, but don't make such faulty assumptions.Serotrance (talk) 02:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The American media obviously believes it to be called Myanmar. Since Wikipedia is American then I say this is how the article should be titled. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mozkill (talk • contribs) 23:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

"Since Wikipedia is American we should call things what the American Media calls them." There is so much wrong with that statement I'm not even going to begin to correct it all. I'm guessing you are American. (Or just a big fan of the US Media??) All I'll say is it is a fact that your Government does not recognise the name "Myanmar." Neither does mine. And both those Governments were elected. Angstriddenyouth (talk) 16:39, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the name should stay Burma, just like how the article about Japan is Japan, not Nihon (日本). Burma is essentially an English word used to represent the country, just like Japan is an English word used to represent Japan. The way the pages are set up now is probably the best way to have it set up for the English Wikipedia. 58.6.47.105 (talk) 13:29, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Really doesn't matter what English speaking nations recognize or not. The official name of the country is Myanmar. It is what the country refers itself with and is recognized by the United Nations and most countries of the world. Politics of the moment should have nothing to do with a name of a nation. If at a future date a future government of Myanmar decide to change their country's name to "Burma" we will refer to it as "Burma." As of now, I strongly favor the name to be "Myanmar." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.124.81.70 (talk) 03:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that the article should definitely be renamed to "Myanmar" or possible "Union of Myanamar" with a redirect from "Myanmar." It is no longer Burma, people have to get this into their minds. The best way to do this is to clearly point it out by the article name, then in the first heading have a little (Formerly known as Burma) bit. It is about the proper name of a place, and educating people about this. Many people I know still think it is just Burma, therefore cannot even look it in an Atlas. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163S (talk • contribs) 10:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

That is an intersting claim so I decided to check into it. worldatlas.com lists under both names in their indices, and on their maps the title is "Myanmar (Burma)". MSN Encarta also lists both names in their index, though their map says only "Myanmar". Maps.com indexes burma as well, but all their modern-time maps only say Myanmar. Basically, I think that, even though you can't read the word "Burma" on most maps, you're not going to have trouble in the digital age, with finding the place. It is afterall the historic name. :) Robbiemuffin (talk) 17:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

How about "Malomar" Most everyone likes Malomars, delicious. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.160.223 (talk) 23:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree. There shouldn't really be a dispute about this - this country is actually called Myanmar, not Burma. Country names change, somewhere in the world, on a reasonably regular basis. It doesn't make sense for an encyclopedia to refer to a country by a defunct name or a "commonly refered to name". It is supposed to simply state the facts, surely? When I consult my atlas I do not see Ceylon or Zaire for example anywhere on any page! Yet I know one or two people who do think of these countries by their older names. That doesn't mean they are suitable for an encyclopedia article title. Dazza79 (talk) 22:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

While you both make a very good point, there is still the issue that English speaking nations do not recognise the name "Myanmar" as the official name, so technically in English (and this being the English version of Wikipedia) "Burma" is the currently recognised name of the country. Any textbooks, maps, official documents and such produced in nations such as the US, Canada, the UK or Australia will use the name Burma, not Myanmar, so English Wikipedia should reflect this usage. The article, as it stands, is a fair representation of the situation. More in-depth information on the name of Burma/Myanmar can be found at Names of Burma. Also, the usage of Burma and Myanmar has been discussed extensively in the past. Please read the archived talk pages, starting from number 2, so see past discussion. Ka-ru (talk) 00:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

That issue, about what nations refer to one another as, is not important, or even influential really, in the (as you say) "technical english name". There is only two places to look for the official name of something; in their authoritative bodies (in this case those are the UN, and the country itself), and the general usage in reference and culture throughout a period of time. Of those four (reference, popular usage, external and internal sources), they almost all agree that the name is Myanmar: The UN, and for that matter individually almost every country on earth, recognizes Myanmar as Myanmar; Myanmar recognizes Myanmar as Myanmar; pop culture recognizes Myanmar as Myanmar (over 100% more references (32 million more) to Myanmar than to Burma, in google). Aung San Suu Kyi herself in her book (reference #2 in the article) concedes that both the official and widespread use is Myanmar, not Burma. Only reference sources could possibly have a different view. A few years ago, I went through all the references in our article and searched their indices. All the reference sources excepting the nytimes referenced Myanmar substantially mroe, but NY Times by itself printed the word burma enough to turn the odds. I don't know the current state of the references list in the article. Robbiemuffin (talk) 17:47, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I gave up after my last move proposal. The persistence on Burma is beyond my understanding, but there's not much to do. Another move request is out of the question, at least for some months. --   Avg    02:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The name of the country is Burma in English. The whole "Myanmar" thing was just a misunderstanding :) Kaldari (talk) 20:42, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

IMO, the name should be "Myanmar," given that that's its official name. Josh (talk) 21:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

"Myanmar" is the country's official English name in Burma. "Burma" is the country's official English name in the US, Canada, UK, etc. Kaldari (talk) 20:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

- Failure to recognize a government does not equate to non-existence of said government. Like it or not, Myanmar is ruled by a military dictatorship and the name was officially changed by that government almost 30 years ago. (This in incorrect. The name was only changed in 1989, against the wishes of the Burmese people.81.208.106.64 (talk) 23:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)) The "protest" argument for Burma has no place in an Encyclopedia. Furthermore, with respect to the "this is the English Language version of Wikipedia", I'd argue that Encyclopedias should reflect reality, rather than the political fancies of governments that happen to use the same language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.130.227.8 (talk) 18:57, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

- I agree; politics has no place in Wikipedia and I think there should be one -neutral- standard for naming countries. Neutral would be: 1. The name recognized by the United Nations or; 2. The name the current government of that country says it is. (in which the 'current government' should mean the government that is actually in charge of the state apparatus, whatever the nature of its power or of its legitimacy. Otherwise, since powerless 'governments' can rise up anywhere, each with their own names, legitimacy etc., there would still be disputes, which is what needs to be prevented)

In fact, ANY standard would be neutral, as long as its applied for every country named in Wikipedia. One final comment: The name dispute should be described (in a neutral way) in a seperate section of the 'Myanmar' article and not be influencing the making of the article itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.97.212.214 (talk) 17:14, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The standard is "If you are talking about a country, use the most commonly used English version of the name for the article... Some cases are less clear cut... One should use judgment in such cases as to what would be the least surprising to a user finding the article." That is the standard that gives us "East Timor" instead of "Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste". In the case of Burma, the English-speaking world seems pretty much evenly split between using "Myanmar" and using "Burma" so there is no mandate according to Wikipedia policies to change the name of the article. Nor is there any kind of consensus among Wikipedia editors to change it (see all the past polls). Saying that one name is "official" and the other one isn't has no weight in Wikipedia-world. Kaldari (talk) 18:44, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

In regards to your final comment, the name dispute seems to be well-described and contained within the country's article, and it also has its own separate article at Names of Burma. -BaronGrackle (talk) 19:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The country's name is Myanmar. It doesn't matter what the english conversion of the word is, the country is called Myanmar. Myanmar can be said in English, therefore, it is good enough. ^{-GuffasBorgz7-} 11:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Ahem. It can be argued that Japan's real name is "Nippon"; however, the English conversion is Japan. Even though Nippon is easily said in English, the article's name is still Japan. Why can't that reasoning hold here? Mouse is back 20:27, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Well the big difference is that there has never been a drive to use "Nippon" in English (and so there hasn't been any success in getting the name in use), and "Japan" is even what the country's government uses in English. That's a very different situation from this country where there has been a drive to use "Myanmar" in English and it has been taken up quite widely. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:23, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Ah. My bad. Mouse is back 01:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

In response to the first poster I'd like to direct you to the issue of Macedonia. In this case there is a single neighbouring country which challenged the name of the country and it has become a significant controversy within the European sphere. Quite a few nations dispute the renaming of Burma as Myanmar. Burma is the appropriate name. 64.201.173.189 (talk) 13:51, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

There are some ninja editors who continually change the etymology section to say "countries such as X, Y, Z.. do not recognize the military government and call the country Burma." But the references used to build that section make no such claims of many countries. To the best of my knoweldge, those are the _only_ countries. The wording is misleading. Robbiemuffin (talk) 18:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that in Japan you can use both Nippon (used by the conservatives mostly) and Nihon (which is the more common term nowadays). So I don't think that will fly. Also, given the movement in the English language of Peking to Beijing, Bombai to Mumbai and more of such linguistic changes, a change from Burma to Myanmar follows a similar pattern. asmodai (talk) 08:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Those changes all reflect changes in the country's official name for those places. Burma to Myanmar isn't such a change. All it is is a change from the common English name to the official name. Please stop posting unnecessary comments that show untrue relationships between different situations. I direct you to Google where you can learn the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin. 58.6.47.105 (talk) 13:34, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

If we call this country Myanmar when the ordinary English name is Burma, why isn't there the same clamour for us to talk about Deutschland, Norge, Italia, España instead of Germany, Norway, Italy, Spain? The truth is that countries are sometimes known by different names, or different versions of the same name, in different languages. So are cities (the French have Londres, Edimbourg Douvres instead of London, Edinburgh, Dover, and we don't worry about that. We have Munich and Rome instead of München and Roma... 6 May 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.157.85.147 (talk) 08:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

On that note, why does Wikipedia refer to Cote d'Iviore as Cote d'Iviore??? Googolme (talk) 16:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

It is not true that there is a preference for Burma anywhere outside of possible newspapers and reference sources. Overall, google has 32 million more references to Myanmar than to Burma, for example. Personally, and I don't expect this to be a very popular idea, but in any case where there is no name endorsed by the namee as the english language name, then I think we should revert to the actual name of the place in question. I would have no trouble accepting "Roma", (except they have an official english language name) because, to me, it is less confusing and makes it easier when searching: I don't have to write Rome OR Roma in my google searches, for example. Robbiemuffin (talk) 18:28, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

In English it's know as Burma, and as this is the English page of Wikipedia it should remain Burma. Otherwise we would have to go to the French wikipedia page and remname Australie to Australia, because that's what Australia calles itself, right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.9.182.39 (talk) 02:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean? In what sense is it known as Burma? So far as I know, it is known as Myanmar, except to a handful of governments and perhaps some english-language reference sources. Robbiemuffin (talk) 18:17, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I just did a search for "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea" and was redirected to "North Korea," despite the fact "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is the official name of that country. (No compass points in there.) We refer to it as "North Korea" for two reasons; firstly because it is shorter, and secondly, because a lot of people have problems with the official name (the democratic part for one..) I suggest we use the name "Burma" for the same reasons. 81.208.106.64 (talk) 22:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, we refer it is by a longer name. Both North Korea and south Korea go by "Korea" as their english language name. North is an adjective added for clarity. Robbiemuffin (talk) 18:30, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

It is not an issue of an English name vs. a local name. The country previously had the name Burma, but switched it to Myanmar, therefore Burma is not an English name. This is different than the use of Germany to refer Deutschland, as that is just an anglicized version of the name. A similar name was not in place for Burma, implying that we stuck with the county's local name back then, so we should do the same now. Calling Myanmar Burma is akin to referring to modern day Russia as the Soviet Union75.152.155.135 (talk) 04:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I must say that the most common English name today is "Myanmar." On the news, in the press, everyone seems to be using "Myanmar" now, however some say both names. Also on most maps shown, it is Myanmar. The use of Burma, was logical, when it was "The Union of Burma," however now it is officially "The Union of Myanmar" therefore, wikipedia must change accordingly. Reference should definately be made to Burma and a redirect from Burma. But we must keep current.--Coffeegirlyme (talk) 19:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The most compelling argument I heard for not using the Junta's imposed name was from a Burmese Human Rights activist who said "no-one who supports democracy here uses the name 'Myanmar.'" Well, I, for one, support democracy.81.208.106.64 (talk) 22:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

And yet the day Miley Cyrus's name change became legal - it was up there on Wikipedia. Time for a priority check. 72.92.4.157 (talk) 13:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

You "guess" wrong. No one doubts that there is a dispute about the name which leads some sources to use Myanmar and others to use Burma. The New York Times may use Myanmar but Time magazine (US), The Times (UK) and The Age (Australia), all very authoritative sources, use Burma. CNN may use Myanmar but the BBC uses Burma. Not one of them is right or wrong. The name of the Wikipedia article should be based on common English usage (as per Wikipedia guidelines) and this seems split between Burma and Myanmar so there's no compelling reason to change the article's name to Myanmar. Keep it how it is. Suitsyou (talk) 18:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

American sources will end up being followed by the ones lagging behind.72.92.4.157 (talk) 20:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Another thing to say about the english/burmese version of the name is that both Burma and Myanmar are English forms of Bama and Mranma75.152.155.135 (talk) 14:09, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow the logic of the arguments about what the 'official' name is. The 'official' name of England is "England". That doesn't stop the French calling it "Angleterre". The French wikipedia article about England is entitled "Angleterre" (look it up). The 'official' name for Germany is "Deutschland". The English wikipedia article is still entitled "Germany" though. Who knows what the capitol of Thailand is? Anyone? bzzzt. No - if you said Bangkok deduct ten points. That city's 'official' name is "Krung Thep Maha Nakhon". Ever hear anyone in English make use of that name? Ever book a flight there? Or did you book it to Bangkok? The word in the English language is 'Burma', just like the name for Deutschland is "Germany", the name for Polska is "Poland" and the name for Kalaallit Nunaat is "Greenland". It doesn't really matter what the native language word is - this article is written in English and read in English. It should use English words. If there's a Burmese language eddition of wikipedia then that should have an entry entitled 'Myanmar'. --62.173.76.218 (talk) 08:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

If you read the above paragraph you would see that Myanmar IS an english word, it is the anglicized version of Mranma, just as Burma is for Bama, and Bangkok is for Krung Thep Maha Nakhon.75.152.155.135 (talk) 22:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Since the official name of the country is Myanmar, recognized by the UN, then this article should be called Myanmar. If they want to change their name, let them do it, we can't stop them... So Myanmar is the correct name for me and Burma an anachronism/left over of the colonial state. Iaberis (talk) 05:08, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia's guidelines state that naming should be according to the common usage of a given language. Practically speaking, English Wikipedia (let alone the rest of the English speaking world) cannot expect to keep up with erratic name changes of a given political state. For example, if a nation kept changing its English name every day it would only cause confusion if everybody else tried to keep up. The English language - let alone any language - requires time to adapt and call entities by their new names. Therefore the name of the country in question should be according to the most commonly used name in the English world as a whole.

However, if one takes a look at the names used to refer to this country, there is no overwhelming bias one way or the other. There may be a preference in different local areas, different media companies or certain English speaking nations & political entities, but as a whole there is a relatively even split between the use of "Burma" and "Myanmar". This poses a problem for Wikipedia with its guidelines of naming things according to their common use in English. Therefore my opinion is that with its present guidelines, Wikipedia is incapable of making a decision either way until there is evidence of an overwhelming preference for one name for this nation. To stay true to its guidelines, Wikipedia should leave the names as they are for now, and wait for common usage to decide, however long that might take. --Davidkazuhiro (talk) 04:38, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Everyone keeps saying the "official" name for this country is "Myanmar" and that it is "recognized by the UN". I'm not seeing cites for these satements. The CIA Factbook declares these "truths" to be untrue, yet I'm not seeing anyone proving the CIA wrong. The task is simple: cite official Burmese source (law, declaration, etc.) where "Myanmar" has been declared the official name. Do that and I'll change. As to whether the UN recognizes something, well, they recognize all sorts of things which are illegitimate, such as governments which kill people who don't accept the "official" degrees of the current leaders. In my opinion, UN endorsement of "Myanmar" is reason to use "Burma". I think this problem could be solved by using clear logic: don't claim the official name is such and such while citing a source which says it is not (which the main article does). Instead, admit in the article what we know to be true: that a government (good, bad or whatever) insists on a name change. Period. Oh, and I'd appreciate it if those who are politicizing the issue by using the name "Myanmar" wouldn't accuse those who use the name "Burma" of politicizing the issue. My vote (as juvenile as voting is) is for Burma. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.135.99 (talk) 15:36, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

• The official Burmese law is the "Adaptation of Expressions Law" in 1989. The CIA doesn't refute that this occurred; they just reject it. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:57, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Textbooks, atlases, and encyclopedias

"Any textbooks, maps, official documents and such produced in nations such as the US, Canada, the UK or Australia will use the name Burma, not Myanmar".
At least part of that is inaccurate. "Myanmar" downright kills "Burma" in terms of online English encyclopedias. Even Britannica, the English one. As I posted at the very end of the most recent archived discussion, "Myanmar" also beats "Burma" in several American atlases and textbooks. I can't speak for whether it has the majority, either in the U.S. or elsewhere, but it might be interesting for anyone who has access to a modern encyclopedia, atlas, or textbook to look it up. I'll bet the majority have "Myanmar (formerly Burma)" or just "Myanmar". Prove me wrong—because I really don't know for a fact! :-) -BaronGrackle (talk) 02:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Let's see. Closest to a textbook on Burmese history I can find is the recent history of Burma/Myanmar. Thant Myint-U. The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma. Farrar Straus 2006. I'm not saying don't call it Myanmar but you must recognize that Burma is the more recognizable English name. Neither of the two Burmese restaurants in New York, for example, use Myanmar in their name. As I've said before, even in Burma, most people use Burma when speaking in English. Personally, I switch between the two often enough that either is fine by me though Myanmar will almost certainly go the way of Kampuchea in a few years. For a historical discussion on the Myanma identity, I refer you to "The Making of Modern Burma" also by Thant Myint-U, specifically pages 83-90. --RegentsPark (talk) 03:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

RE: restaurants: Peking Duck will always be Peking Duck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.92.4.157 (talk) 13:57, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll acknowledge that "Burma" creams "Myanmar" on books about the country itself, as it does on Google Scholar. Burma wins among academics. But few students in English-dominant countries will study those books. What about generic textbooks, like the world history or world geography books that a student will use? From the ones I looked through recently, it was called "Burma" up until the regime change, when it was called "Myanmar", and the latter was the one listed in the indexes. -BaronGrackle (talk) 03:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

That might be the case. Google maps, which were pure Burma about an year ago, has switched to Myanmar (Burma) recently. (Though, oddly enough, it sticks to Rangoon rather than Yangon.) However, I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar that a poll of 18-24 year olds will find a higher name recognition for Burma than for Myanmar. I do recommend reading the pages referenced above (if you haven't already). You'll see why my Kampuchea analogy makes sense. In the meantime, the confusion goes on ..... --RegentsPark (talk) 03:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it is interesting about google scholar. The number is 2:1 in favor of burma. In google in general it is 2:1 in favor of myanmar, so I went in and excluded articles prior to 1989 (the date of the name change to myanmar), and still a 1.5:1 in favor of burma. To get results that are in favor of myanmar, I had to excluded social sciences results (which are about one quarter or so of all papers with either name), because they could reasonably make use of "burma" for completeness in political topic coverage. Still, that is almost a tie in numbers, what was I missing? I looked at some of the sample burma papers, what was matching? Burma, it turns out, is a common last name! So, to limit those results I did a title search. Now the results are more to expectations: burma: 373, myanmar: 1310 Robbiemuffin (talk) 18:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I just looked it up in my world atlas printed in 2006. It lists Myanmar on all the main maps and in the index. The name Burma appears in parentheses and in smaller font underneath Myanmar on the maps. Furthermore my atlas was printed in Slovakia and seems to have a German version, from which mine is a direct translation it seems. So the name Myanmar, at least from this sole indicator, seems to have found favour on the European continent. 62.31.183.230 (talk) 12:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Myanmar is recognised by most countries around the world, including many European countries, so it's no surprise your map says Myanmar. Unfortunately all major English speaking countries, and by that I mean those country's governments, do not recognise the name Myanmar, but instead recognise the name Burma. I think I agree with most people that Myanmar is probably the more correct name, but while no major English speaking nation officially recognises the name, the English article on this country should be named "Burma" while stressing the Myanmar name in the article. Perhaps "Burma (Myanmar)" would be a more appropriate name? Ka-ru (talk) 15:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the most compelling evidence for usage is HERE. That is the official United Nations member states list, and lists the country name as Myanmar (19 April 1948). For anyone else to ignore this fact and continue this nonsensical insistence on using the name "Burma" would be to insist upon using the name "USSR", "East Germany", "North Vietnam/South Vietnam" and many others that have been cast into history. The title "Burma" deserves a HISTORICAL article. The title Myanmar deserves the proper, official usage for the article on the COUNTRY. Period. (similar to the article on "China" historically and the actual country of "People's Republic of China") Rarelibra (talk) 17:17, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Rarelibra, The UN recognises the name "Myanmar". That is not in dispute. Many nations recognise that name. The issue here is that this is the English-language version of Wikipedia, and the guidelines for Wikipedia clearly state that we should follow "common usage". Though the UN recognises the name "Myanmar", the US, the UK, Canada and Australia do not, and they are the main English-speaking nations. These nations recognise the name "Burma". By this fact alone the "common usage" name is most definitely Burma. It is not "nonsensical" but, whether you like it not, fact. Media outlets like the BBC use the name Burma for that reason. These nations do not recognise the names "USSR", "East Germany" or "North Vietnam/South Vietnam", so your argument is invalid. The name Myanmar, while in the majority usage internationally, is in the minority usage in English speaking countries. You may consider this a backward attitude by these nations, but it doesn't change the fact that that is how it is. Over time I, like you, hope that these nations will adopt the name Myanmar, but until then Wikipedia should reflect common usage in English speaking nations, which is Burma. If you have issues with this attitude, write to the governments of the US, UK, Canada and Australia imploring them to recognise the name "Myanmar". Until they do, "Burma" will continue to be used and issues like the one being discussed here will continue to surface. Personally, I think the article name "Burma (Myanmar)" is more appropriate than "Burma", but that is just my personal opinion. Ka-ru (talk) 17:47, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I will provide another critical reference HERE. Even this states

• ... official UK policy for state titles is to reflect the will of the authorities in the country of origin, which in this instance means using “Union of Myanmar” as the state title in official UK usage. Rarelibra (talk) 17:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

• Rarelibra points out something significant: the major English-speaking governments may not "recognize" Myanmar in the sense of using its term informally, but they "recognize" Myanmar in the sense that they publically address the name and officially reject it (except in the case of the above U.K. release linked above, apparently, which states they DO use it officially). Even though the governments of these countries do not officially use Myanmar, their people identify the name; disapproval of a regime and public usage/knowledge of it are two completely different things. BBC may use Burma, but many other English media outlets do not. That has been established in the archival discussions. Nearly all the official sources who use Burma use it because they reject Myanmar's politics; not because Burma is "more English". This section, however, was specifically to call into question encyclopedic and reference material. It's not something that makes or breaks the case for Myanmar, and I don't pretend it is, but I do still think there are many people here who just don't believe that Myanmar dominates this area. -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Just a quick note - that is from the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use, from the UK government. Rarelibra (talk) 20:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

A quick point: I'm from the UK and have always heard people (the general public) say Burma when discussing it, never heard Myanmar. Also, BBC News uses Burma. --Joowwww (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Rarelibra you have been very selective with your quote if you had quoted the whole paragraph other conclusions can be drawn: "(para 14) Official practice in the United Kingdom is to use as country names those names which are in common informal usage in British English. In this instance, that name is “Burma”, and hence “Burma” is the country name in official UK usage. But official UK policy for state titles is to reflect the will of the authorities in the country of origin, which in this instance means using “Union of Myanmar” as the state title in official UK usage." Wikipedia policy is to use as country the country names those names which are in common informal usage in British English. Further if you had included the 2 paragraphs before para 14, it might have shed some light on the situation inside Burma "(para 12) Politics have entered this debate very forcefully. To the SLORC/SPDC, use of the word bama may be indicative of subversion. Conversely, the National League for Democracy have largely eschewed all reference to “Myanmar” and have continued to use “Burma” and its derivatives. Indeed, it can be argued that it is difficult to make a choice of country name without, in so doing, delivering a political judgement on the current authorities. The NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi has certainly delivered her verdict: No-one should be allowed to change the name of the country without referring to the will of the people. They [the SLORC/SPDC] say that “Myanmar” refers to all the Burmese ethnic groups, whereas “Burma” only refers to the Burmese ethnic group, but that is not true. “Myanmar” is literary word for “Burma” and it refers only to the Burmese ethnic group. Of course I prefer the word “Burma”. (para 13) Thus the seductive argument of inclusiveness, employed by the authorities to promote the use of “Myanmar” at the expense of “Burma”, and to demonstrate their patriotic goodwill for the entire country, is in reality a false argument. “Myanmar” is not a neutral and all- inclusive term. If anything, it is less inclusive than “Burma”, since in the minds of all non- Burmans “Myanmar” is a word inextricably linked to the majority Burman ethnic group." --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 10:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

To be clear, the excerpt says that the UK government policy is to call them Myanmar, but the normal practice in the UK, in the English language, should officially use Burma. (Because of a "common usage" that is neither sited nor backed with original research. It is stated axiomatically.) Aung San Suu Kyi herself in her book, refernce #2 in the article, concedes that Myanmar is both the offical name of the government and the de facto widespread name in use: (from Chapter 2, under section "Mynamar or Burma" (emphasis mine):

...citizens speaking in Burmese, who continue to refer to both Myanma as well as Bama (this not unlike formal reference in the English language to The Netherlands while informally using Holland). ... In 1988 it briefly went back to Union of Burma, and now we must refer to the Union of Myanmar, or Pyidaungsu Myanmar Naingngandaw.

Though taking place without referendum, this was officially endorsed by the United Nations five days after the regime's declaration. Because of the UN endorsal it has entered into widespread use, so that it is currently even used by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International.

Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:08, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

For me, I am for the use of Myanmar. Not being Burmese, I do not feel that my country is my home when its called "Burma". The name Burma and Myanmar are both politicized. Burma, btw, came from our dialect group, the Arakanese. Its like calling the whole of UK as England - you leave out Wales, Scotland, N. Ireland and the Channel islands. Its like saying Edinburgh is an English town, etc. There were many ethnic rebels, who wanted autonomy, and one of their claims was that "Burma" was for the "Burmese", not them, so they had the reason to revolt. The military junta changed the name, so that the rebels will have one less reason for taking up arms, and now, people ignore the name change. Its either balkanization or international rejection - I think the Serbs would know a great deal on this subject.

Many people will go around in circles trying to justify Burma over Myanmar - some say because the body which made the name change was illegal - but the UN accepts it - but they say because Wiki is in English, we use what the UK uses, and if some people want the name "Myanmar", they are wrong because Aung San Suu Kyi favours the name Burma. The best thing is to ask ALL the people, not just the political activists - just because they fight for democracy does not mean they are representing 100% of the people's desires.

The whole article was great a year ago. Some immature people thought they'd do something when they saw the monks protesting for the people - rather, they have vandalized a nice piece of work, making it into a piece of politics. I appreciate their concerns, but that act of rabid name changing did bad than any good - like most of the sanctions being imposed. Just like smart sanctions, people who want Myanmar to be democratic must also use smart means, not that of a 3 year-old. This is an encyclopedia, not your scrabble pad, nor your webpage - the only intent is to give the article as it is officially named, and to give the best picture there is, not to spread one's ideas and thoughts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uthantofburma (talk • contribs) 14:09, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A Piece of Logic...

We call Deutschland Germany
We call Zhongguo China
We call Nippon Japan
We call Bharat India
We call Ellada Greece
We call Österreich Austria

But for some reason, because Myanmar is their official name, we should use that term despite hundreds of years of using Burma. Why don't we change all of the article names above too? Or can someone explain why Burma should be an exception? Obviously some have taken to using the name Myanmar, but this usage is far from 100%. Until that time, I believe the status quo should be kept, especially considering the relative instability in the country. DJLayton4 (talk) 08:09, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Its different - this topic is being reportedly raised by many people - read the whole arguement section - they do not insist on being called those names, and in Myanmar, the name change effected the English change too - like Cote d'Ivore, Timore Leste, Siam. What about them? What makes them so special that we call them that, but not other countries when they officially change their name. Do you want to be called Baby Joe or Joe when you are working in your office? The Burmese, btw, use Burma when we refer to our country because most people are too damn ignorant to know where countries are around the world. It is like when you talk to a Brit, and have to refer to the United States as "The Colonies".

Erm pretty much everyone here in Britain knows where the US is, no-one requires you to refer to the US as the Colonies, since we refer to it as the US. Deamon138 (talk) 23:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Aung San Suu Kyi's opinion is another matter. What I am trying to address is the Deutschland - Germany thing.

Bloody junta's illegitimate, but the UN isn't. And if you're going to over step the UN, like some nations do, well, go ahead, leave the UN. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uthantofburma (talk • contribs) 09:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• Both sides can play logic games:

We call Deutschland Germany
We call France France
We called the CCCP the Soviet Union, when its government asked us to
We call Tâi-oân China, because its government asks us to
We call Iran Iran, because its government asks us to
We call Côte d'Ivoire Côte d'Ivoire, because its government asks us to
We call Prathet Thai Thailand, because its government asks us to
We call Myanma Myanmar, because its government asks us to

Note that Iran is an English word as well as a Persian one.
Note that Thailand is an English word and arguably not a Thai one.
Note that Myanmar is an English word and arguably not a Burmese one.
Note that, earlier, I said "Persian" when I referred to something involving Iran, yet I still use Iran when referring to the country.
Note that all of these countries' names are noted by the U.N. and can be found to refer to their countries in English news sources, books, atlases, etc. -BaronGrackle (talk) 16:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

We call Timór-Lorosae East Timor, even though its government asks us to call it Timor-Leste.

Wikipedia is not dictated by government order. It is dictated by the usage of the English language. Kaldari (talk) 19:30, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• In that case, I'd refer you to an English-speaking map, major news source, or international organization. -BaronGrackle (talk) 20:52, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Do you mean a map published by the United Nations such as this?: http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/myanmar.pdf

This body was designed to recognize the legitimacy of nations and create a standard for communication between nations (among other things). People have the right to self-author themselves. If this is what the government has asked, that the ENGLISH name change from Burma to Myanmar, then it is imperialism to insist otherwise. I strongly recommend doing as this country's government has asked, and as the United nations has officially recognized. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mmercede (talk • contribs) 06:02, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

It's imperialism not to obey the orders of a military dictatorship? That's a new one!

• • OK: "However it was not recognized by many western governments such as the United States, Australia, Canada or the United Kingdom, which continue to use "Burma," while the European Union uses "Burma/Myanmar" as an alternative." 137.22.25.155 (talk) 03:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It strikes me as the action of an insecure and dictatorial government that tries to dictate what foreigners call a country in their own languages. Imagine if the German government insisted we speak of Deutschland in English conversation or Spain started insisting on España - we would consider that absurd. Wikipedia does not and should not reflect the whims of governments but rather actual English usage. Thailand is now almost universally used in English and Siam is only known historically, but in my opinion Burma still has a much wider usage than Myanmar - probably because the English-speaking world's knowledge of and interest in Burma has declined in post-colonial times as Burma's government has shut the country off from the outside world and impoverished it. It is probably simply the case that we have less reason mention Burma as the country's significance to us has declined, and therefore the opportunity to use the name Myanmar arises more rarely. The issue has also been politicised as while the Burmese government insists on Myanmar, others in the Burmese opposition prefer Burma. Booshank (talk) 17:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I'm sorry but...

I know we shouldn't get involved in political disputes, but the country in question doesn't even let its citizens access this website or the internet for that matter! Moreover, the name change didn't involve the very people who live in the country (many Burmese still say use Burma). It was done by a completely undemocratic and non-traditional government. Imagine, if one day a bunch of crazies took over England against the will of the people for 50 years and called it Cooterland and against the traditional head of state, the Crown (therefore having lacking legitimacy), would we all have to assume England was now Cooterland? Nope. It's still England. The name of a country and a place reflects more than just what the heads of government want to call it. It is its history, its people, its culture. England the land of Angles and India can be traced to the people of the Indis River, China can be traced to a ruling dynasty, even Istanbul is just a bastardization of its prior name. Kinshasa's name reflects (some would argue) the will of the people not to name their capital after a guy that cut off people's legs. Yeah sometimes names are screwy and nonsensical in other languages but it's too late to change them half the time, so forget those! Now that we're focusing on endonyms to be PC, maybe we should use the name the Burmese people want not the one the people oppressing them have created. I oppose the name Myanmar. Arthurian Legend (talk) 17:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you've a great point, if only you wouldn't glorify it. They suffer from very restricted access to the internet. Possibly in line with Korea, Iran, and other such countries. But they have full representation on Wikipedia (my.wikipedia.org), it is not like they cannot acces this site. Most of the traffic blocking is of the form of file formats (specifically, video, audio). Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:22, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

• Two things regarding your example of England vs. Cooterland:
  
  1. If you change "England" to "Russia" and "Cooterland" to "Soviet Union", you'll find your conclusion from the exercise to be innacurate. Pretending a totalitarian regime doesn't exist is not the answer. And,
  2. I notice you used the word "England". Indeed, England is often what people hear in everyday conversation; one might say that it's common usage (especially among those more ignorant here in the U.S.) not only for the country/province but also for the state/nation itself. In fact, I bet that—though it would be close—the name "England" is more recognizable to a majority of English speakers than "United Kingdom" is. Anyone who recognizes United Kingdom would also recognize England; the same cannot be said of the opposite. Still, we do not call the nation's page England; sometimes fact should trump common usage.
  The few people who can identify Burma but cannot identify Myanmar are, let's face it, ignorant of that country's history since the '60s. The vast majority of people/nations who choose to use Burma do so because they prefer Burma for political/human rights reasons, not because they don't know what Myanmar is. "Recognition" in terms of legitimacy is not the same as "recognition" in terms of being able to identify a place. Every English-speaking nation in the world realizes the country calls itself Myanmar, and every English-speaker who watches the news or skims a reference source knows that the country is called Myanmar (in contrast, show me an English news source that uses "Deutschland" for Germany). This name is easily recognizable, AND it's accurate. "Burma" only has one of those two. -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Your recognition argument is interesting though still some what irrelevant since so many people don't even know what Myanmar or Burma is (unless you say it's where Crab Rangoon is from, but I jest) Language has power. When people learn about Burma (which is why someone may be researching it here) they should know that this is NOT the name of the country according to the legitimate opposition government, which was elected and is legitimate and it is not the name of the country in the people use.

As for England, yeah probably many people outside of the UK use England synonymously with the UK for Britain. To quote Dick Cheney, "So?" They are wrong. TEACH THEM. This relates to my earlier point. Reference materials such an encyclopedias, teach people, and the England article does that, it shows that England is a country but it's part of a larger nation, the UK. The same applies for the Soviet Union and Russia, Russia was just a part of the USSR, and yeah, by far the most important and powerful part, but it was not Russia. (Stalin was Georgian, not a Russian.) If people don't know the difference, they should. They can find that info here. Wikipedia should teach people, if they're looking for Myanmar, it's actually called Burma but despots took it over and changed the name and now you're smarter (and therefore better) for knowing that. Arthurian Legend (talk) 22:48, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• Your comment is sensible and noble, but it is not Wikipedia. You want this page to be called Burma not because of common usage in the English language, but because: "When people learn about Burma (which is why someone may be researching it here) they should know that this is NOT the name of the country according to the legitimate opposition government". When this page was moved to Burma, the "winning" argument said it was because Myanmar was less known in the English language. That was not the real reason; the real reason was because the majority of people believed what you have so clearly stated. Myanmar is the name of the article if we want Wikipedia to reflect reality; Burma is the name of the article if we want Wikipedia to "teach" people how reality should be. And, despite what our policies might say, Wikipedia is a democracy—which is sometimes good. In this case, though, I believe "Burma" won the bulk of the original vote and tied the second vote only because the majority of its supporters (not all of you, of course) purposely or unknowingly voted contrary to Wikipedia "policies". If you disagree, then glance through the different votes. Read why each person voted, and see how many voted for each name because they felt it was common use... and how many voted because Burma was the "legitimate opposition government". -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:54, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I think like most controversies in Wikipedia, this reveals the problem with Wikipedia, it attempts to democratize truth through opinion. Truth and Opinion don't necessarily go hand in hand. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.191.211.54 (talk) 17:24, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Example against the Wikipedia notion of naming articles according to the most common nomenclature. See Brown vs Board of Education, most people know this case as Brown vs. THE Board of Ed, yet the "THE" is omitted in the title because legal cases do not include articles. Here Wikipedia uses the OFFICIAL name which is not the name used by most people. So... there.

I've always heard Brown versus Board of Education, without any "the." BirdValiant (talk) 22:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Same here. Brown v. Board of Education.--Alt175 (talk) 20:28, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] It isn't all about politics!

Burma captures the name of the country throughout its history. The Myanmar name is restricted to recent events. If the page is only about recent history, then Myanmar is better, but it is about the whole country, including its long history and culture, so Burma is better. The top of the page tells all readers that the official name is The Union of Myanmar, so I don't see what is wrong with the page - about the country's geography, history, demographics &c. - being called Burma. Mjb1981 (talk) 10:12, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Add a section about the naming dispute, that will inform readers about the different opinions a lot more than re-naming the page...(talk) 10:15, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

But this is really not true. It's name to the people of the area is something that transliterates to myanmar. It is a formal, literary name of the Burmese people and has been the de facto name of those people since the 13th century, around the time the west "discovered" the east! If anything the brief usage of Burma in recent history can be well-associated with Brittish occupation. If the rest of the english-speaking world continued to call the USA "the Colonies" you can bet we'd fight a war of the words too. Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Amen. 64.191.211.54 (talk) 17:23, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely with the above: the Burma article covers Burma throughout time, and so the vast majority of what is covered is about a country called 'Burma'. If you want to write an article covering Burma/Myanmar only in the past 19 years, only then is there a controversy. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 13:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Common names vs official names

I stumbled onto the Burma page and am surprised to note this disagreement. Wikipedia clearly uses the common name of countries as the title of their article pages. The official name of the country should simply be inserted in brackets after the common name as is the case for Hungary, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, Germany, Russia, Indonesia, France, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, India and many others. We do not use Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, the Swiss Confederation or Federal Republic of Germany even though these are the official names of those countries. Even the United Kingdom page goes by its popular or common name rather than the eight words that its official name constitute. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is referred to on wikipedia as Soviet Union. Need I go on? China is a notable exception since there's more than one entity known by that same name. If we change this article page from Burma to Myanmar, why then should we not change Switzerland to the Swiss Confederation, Germany to the Federal Republic of Germany, Iran to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and so on and so forth? We use the common name here on wikipedia because this is a popular encyclopedia and not a guidebook on international diplomacy. --Bardin (talk) 15:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

This is yet another red herring. You're confusing the issue of long and short names with common names. "Germany" is that country's official "short" name in English so there's no issue there. Ditto "Switzerland" etc... The issue is whether the common name is the short official form "Myanmar" or the old and politicised term "Burma". Timrollpickering (talk) 15:41, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not believe what I wrote is another red herring. Where exactly in the Switzerland article is it indicated that Switzerland is the "official short" name in English? Ditto Germany and the others. This discussion clearly would not even be taking place if Myanmar is the common name for Burma. --Bardin (talk) 01:31, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

The big difference is that those other names (Germany, Switzerland, etc) are what the authorities in those countries would use if they were speaking in English in an ordinary conversation. There's no dispute with those, any more than when I say Angleterre when I (try to) speak French. FWIW I don't see how the Burmese government has any authority to say what other people call their country, and I wonder how many of the pro-Myanmar supporters would've agreed with the USA if (entirely hypothetically) they'd decided to rename Irag to Georgebushland after the invasion... -Riedquat (talk) 22:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not see what relevance authorities have in this discussion but you hit it on the nail when you note that they would be using those terms when speaking English in an ordinary conversation. They would also use the word Burma in ordinary conversation because that's the common English name despite whatever the authorities in that country might otherwise prefer. --Bardin (talk) 07:21, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

No if they were speaking English in an ordinary conversation they would use Myanmar. The authorities issue is relevant because the name change has been driven from the top down - this is not unusual. The name "United States" is also one chosen by authorities and usage following that. As for the common English name, if this epic discussion has shown anything it is that there is no single common name for the country and usage varies wildly across different English speaking countries. Hence the looking to the official name as a means of a "tie-breaker". Timrollpickering (talk) 11:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It's been a long time since wikipedia did that with country names. Take a look at the links you referenced, there is no (in parenthesis) listing any more. Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Both Politically Incorrect

either choice will offend someone. Both are considered correct, why can't we use both? Often name changes with the change of government. Myanmar is still Burma, but the government calls itself Myanmar. The reason for the change is often given to be more inclusive of non Burmans. Rds865 (talk) 18:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

But "Myanmar" is a politicized term, implying an endorsement of the illegitimate regime, whereas "Burma" has been used for centuries. 137.22.15.103 (talk) 18:10, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

An indefensible statement. I do not support the current illegitimate regime in Myanmar, but I support using the name "Myanmar" because it describes that current regime. The same goes for almost all editors here who use or support Wikipedia using Myanmar. Conversely, most editors who support using "Burma" do not support the current regime (though that's hardly a fair accessment, since who wouldn't support democracy? :-) ). Like you said, nations like the U.S. and U.K. can use "Burma" to show they do not believe the current regime is legitimate. They hope tactics like this can change the nation's government. Bravo for them. However, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is not a medium that tries to bring change to reality; it is meant to describe what is reality. Look at the infobox on the Burma article. Is Senior General Than Shwe really the leader of a democratic Burma? No. He leads the dictatorship government of Myanmar. -BaronGrackle (talk) 19:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Political leanings of editors here should have no say whatsoever on what goes on here on wikipedia. If "Myanmar" is what the ruling regime calls it in English, then "Myanmar" it is. Whether the ruling regime is a democracy or a dictatorship or a tribal outfit is inconsequential. We are not here to fight for democracy in Burma or China. We are here just to report facts. Sarvagnya 21:35, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

We ARE reporting facts. The FACT in question is: In the English language, how is the state in question referred to? And the study of English uses a DESCRIPTIVIST, not a prescriptivist convention. That means, it doesn't matter if the country had a democratic revolution, established a beautiful utopian society, and issued a directive to the whole world that the official new English name of their country is New Myanmar. Neither the government of that country (nor, for that matter, the United Nations) is the arbiter of the English language. Perhaps over time, as the English media use "Myanmar" more often and if (this is a big if) enough public attention is focused on the nation to cause those references to displace people's common usage of the term, then people will start saying Myanmar. When that happens, change the title. ---65.33.130.49 (talk) 20:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Descriptivist, huh? If Myanmar is so obscure, why does every other online encyclopedia call it that? Why do other Wikis such as wikitravel and uncyclopedia (not an authority on information, sure, but it says a bit on cultural perception) still use it? When I type "Burma" in Google maps, how is it that the only thing I find is a street in Juárez? When I type "Burma" in Yahoo travel, why is it that the sponsor results keep mentioning Myanmar on the right side? Why is it that when I type "Myanmar" in the same engine, I get almost twice as many results and no mentioning of the word Burma for my clarification? Is it because Google, Yahoo, every major encylopedia except this one, and every Wiki except this one is being prescriptive instead of descriptive? This article was called "Myanmar" until the monk controversy, after which a majority vote (and no consensus) changed it... a majority vote that completely collapsed in a matter of months. The support for Burma's common usage comes from (1) English-speaking government prescriptive use, and (2) historical books and articles (in which I'm sure Persia also contends fairly well against Iran). Things may change if the government changes someday, but even I know that Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. -BaronGrackle (talk) 02:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I would think both names are politicized. This is the name of a country, afterall! And "Myanmar" has been used for at least 7 centuries, if not as long as "Burma". It has and continues to be, the default name of the country, to the people there. Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Saying that we can't accept "Myanmar" because we don't accept their current regime as legitimate, is probably more political a statement than any other we've seen in the course of this debate. We can argue all we want about their legitimacy, but the military regime is a reality. Who are WE to question it? Who are WE to dump democracy on unwilling nations? WP is an encyclopaedia, not a political propaganda machine. Here we go by accuracy and practicality.

On Google, the most popular search engine beyond any reasonable doubt, Myanmar returns twice as many results (79,100,000) as does Burma. So, there is our basis (common usage in the English world). Now, what happens when the hits get close? We stick with what's more accurate today. Let's not forget that we do have redirect facilities. So, even if people search Burma, they'll find the right article under Myanmar.

For people questioning the authorities' rights to change the name, imagine my name is John Doe. Then I change it to David Doe. What kind of insane person will continue to call me John once I tell her/him of the name change. In the case of a country, this authority of naming belongs to the current government - irrespective of our feelings for that government. Moreover, Burma --> Myanmar is not a name change in the purest sense. It's a transliteration correction keeping in mind English pronunciation guidelines. Apparently the "r" in Burma is causing trouble given that the usage of rhotic English now as opposed to when the name was first transliterated by the English. People calling "Myanmar" political need to realise that Burma is a LOT more political (given how the only reason to keep that is US and UK's pro-democracy bias). Myanmar, on the other hand, is just a matter of fact. 132.206.35.197 (talk) 16:50, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Burma

This is the English Wikipedia, so I think it should be Burma since thats the official name in English (plus no one knows what Myanmar is, since all media {including video games} refer to it as Burma.) If the Burmese want to name it Myanmar on the Burmese Wikipedia, they can do that, but plz dont change it to Myanmar just because 1 or 2 English speaking Burmese natives say they want it like that.--4.244.36.56 (talk) 01:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry where does it say Burma is official in English? English has no equivalent of the Académie française to hand down rulings on high and it's not the name the country's government uses in English, which is the only thing that qualifies as an official name. Timrollpickering (talk) 07:15, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

There's no consensus to move the article to Myanmar (regretfully). Therefore, it stays Burma. GoodDay (talk) 17:18, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

When was there ever consensus to move it from there in the first place? Timrollpickering (talk) 19:32, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

No see, that's the funny thing. The official name of the country, in the country, is something we can't really say very well in english at all. For that reason, they submit a version of their name to be used when speaking in English. That 'official' name is Myanmar. Burma is not the official name of anything except some people's families (its a popular family name). Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want to observe the common usage of the name Myanmar, just go to google news and search for "cyclone". The vast majority of english language media outlets are reporting this tragedy as originating from Myanmar, not Burma (although some still do use it). Panamajack (talk) 19:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Res to Timrollpicking: I don't know, I haven't gone back that far (Wiki archives). PS- When was there ever a consensus to fill English Wikipedia with Diacritics? There's plenty of Wiki mysteries. GoodDay (talk) 20:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll just add that I oppose moving the article to Myanmar for historical reasons; it is significantly less confusing to use historical terms which have been in use for centuries. Additionally, Burma is still in common usage, despite the efforts of the current regime to rename the nation (perhaps as an attempt to gain legitimacy?) While either name may perhaps be "correct", there is certainly no need to rename this article, IMO. The Jade Knight (talk) 01:43, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

My two cents worth is that we should call the article Burma. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 10:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Its not like Myanmar was an unpopular name for the country or the people of that area .. the names have been used interchangeably for centuries. Than includes that the name was "Myanmar" quite commonly in english language news sources prior to the name change (There are samples of news reports sited in "Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics", the second reference in the article, from before 1988, that use Myanmar.) Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Again, I challenge opponents to show that Burma is more commonly used across the english language press currently; a simple google news search on the tragic cyclone clearly demonstrates this. Panamajack (talk) 14:57, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

How does the United Nations recognise it? --G2bambino (talk) 15:23, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

What's even more tormenting, my 2 fav newscasts CBC news (Burma) & CNN (Myanmar) use both names. GoodDay (talk) 20:16, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

UN recognizes it as MYANMAR. I think there are a lot of illogical arguments, such as "we call Deutchland Germany", etc. There was a very logical explanation - Myanmar government asks us to call it Myanmar, period. Recognized by the UN. Pretty simple conclusion, then. Stop the semantics and realize that in some cases, such as this one, proper name is the best fit. That is why the article is "Gdansk" and not "Danzig", "Beijing" and not "Peking", "Mumbai" and not "Bombay", etc. Rarelibra (talk) 20:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll support moving Burma to Myanmar. Frustratingly, previous page movement requests have failed. GoodDay (talk) 20:34, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I support moving it to Myanmar too. Can the champions of "Burma" show me an ounce of evidence that Burma is "more popular" than "Myanmar". As I flipped channels in the last day or two, I heard "Myanmar" far more often than I heard "Burma". And Myanmar is, to boot, the official name. That is what they call themselves and that is what the world recognizes them as. Seriously, what is the debate here about?! Sarvagnya 22:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I also support. There seems to be little use of Burma, especially when it's in the focus of the English-language media. Even our front page uses Myanmar! --Jedravent (talk) 00:03, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

One could make the argument that press could refer to the country differently than the general populace, especially considering that the military junta actually runs the press. See Reporters Without Borders for their low-ranking press freedom.

I'd say that the name used here should be one that reflects what people think of the country in the particular language. In English, we refer to the political entity to the south of Denmark's land border as "Germany," not "Deutschland." If the government suddenly ordered that everybody in every language should call the entity "Deutschland" instead of their native equivalents, I seriously doubt that anybody would make any effort to abide.

Germany is obviously well engrained in the English language, but this isn't true with other countries, especially ones with little history in Western minds. For example, we don't continue to call Zimbabwe "Rhodesia" because most Westerners probably haven't even heard of its historical name (and because Rhodesia was just the name of the conqueror and not indicative of the country's heritage). "Germany" could be considered the historical name once it demanded everyone to say "Deutschland," but it would be this historical name that everybody would know and say.

"Burma" didn't come from any foreign colonization, it was just an attempt to say "Bama" in an English tongue. They could have chosen the other native name for their country "Myanma," but their choice of "Burma" stuck for decades in the Western mind. Why should we switch over to the old alternative if people aren't familiar with it? If people say Germany, then call it Germany. If people say Burma, call it Burma. If people really call it Myanmar, then call it Myanmar. Personally, I, my friends, and my family think "Burma," (if they are aware of its existence) so I would advocate this usage. BirdValiant (talk) 00:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

This is 2 decades out! Historically, in the long term, they've been Myanmar since the 13th century, except for very recently. But very recently, in the 80s they changed their name back to Myanmar again. Popularly, in their own country, they are Myanmar (and Burma). So, there is no time frame in which it makes more sense to call it Burma on the basis of the common name. It isn't historical, it is political. Politically, it is convenient to challenge them in every way we can, and to drum up interest by creating artificial problems like this. Robbiemuffin (talk) 19:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Since when do we give a shit what some undemocratically elected military Government tells us to do? It's Burma, period. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 22:55, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Refusing the government would be POV. --Jedravent (talk) 00:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

PPoY - One, despite your bluster, this is not about "giving a shit" to an "undemocratically elected" (whatever that means) govt.,. Secondly, and out of curiosity, which policy or guideline on wikipedia prevents us from "giving a shit" to an "undemocratically elected" government? Thirdly, why dont you first try to impress on the United Nations and the media, among others, not to "give a shit" to the "undemocratically elected" government. Fourthly, since when do we give a shit to empty rhetoric devoid of any semblance of both sources and intelligence? Sarvagnya 00:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is here to report fact. Fact says it's Myanmar. I mean Hitler wasn't voted Fuhrer (he was voted Chancellor) of Germany yet that is how history refers to him: as the Fuhrer of Germany, regardless of the fact that he was the most evil c**t ever, it's fact and still POV to do otherwise. Deamon138 (talk) 00:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

All Führer means is 'leader'. It is the English speaking world that has politicised the term. Secondly, I couldn't give a toss what the United Nations has to say about anything. Burma is Burma. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 00:45, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Regardless of whether or not you give a "toss" or a "shit" (or both) to the United Nations or anybody else, we on wikipedia do "give a shit" about what our WP:RS sources call it. And incidentally, WP:RS sources, it has been observed, treat the United Nations with a lot of respect. So would you bring your bluster down a notch and show us some evidence that "Burma" is still "Burma" and not "Myanmar"? Sarvagnya 01:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Also if you check your history you'll see that upon the death of President Hindenburg, Adolf merged the offices of Chancellor and President to create that of Führer. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 00:45, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Firstly yes Fuhrer means leader, but it was Hitler himself who politicized the term, by calling himself "Führer und Reichskanzler." I think Hitler creating this POLITICAL office is what made it political not any English people. Regardless of whether Hitler created the office from two existing offices, it was still UNDEMOCRATIC of him to do so, same as with the Government of the country formerly known as Burma renaming it Myanmar. In English, we refer to Hitler as Germany's Fuhrer despite the fact that its the name he wanted us to call him. See the article on Fuhrer which says, "It is mainly used in English and third languages as the term for Nazi Germany's totalitarian ruler Adolf Hitler." This rule should apply to naming the article Myanmar. Deamon138 (talk) 23:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

What does Hitler and Yugo have to do with these little Asiatic pseudo-Chinamen in Myanmar? If they choose the name Myanmar then we should call them Myanmar, right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.74.192.210 (talk) 03:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

A fact, such as the name of a country, is never subject to opinion. Anyone who says it should be "Burma" or "Myanmar" based on their feelings is not contributing to an encyclopedic article. There is a name for this country, and it is not easily expressed in English, since it is in Burmese and uses a non-arabic script. This name has been translated into English, into what we call a "conventional name", which "Burma" has been since the very beginning. I don't care how it is translated, but to suggest that these same words are now translated into something else seems silly. I am bothered that the main Wiki article says the official name is Myanmar and quotes the BBC as proof, but the BBC does not state Myanmar is the official name; instead, suggests Myanmar is only an alternative. Read the BBC article and you will see. I am removing the word "official" from the Wiki article. Also, this Wiki article links to the CIA Factbook, but fails to mention the U.S. position as stated there, which is that no official legislative body has changed the name from Burma to Myanmar. Instead, the Myanmar name change seems to be a public relations campaign which the U.S. has not recognized as official. I say we stay with "Burma" until "Burma" changes their name officially. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.135.99 (talk) 16:29, 9 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.135.99 (talk)

[edit] Usage in English language media

[edit] Media referring to the country as Burma

1. BBC [2]
2. The Times (London) [3]
3. CBC [4]
4. Voice of America [5] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angstriddenyouth (talk • contribs) 20:49, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
5. Yahoo New Zealand [6]
6. The Australian [7]
7. The Telegraph [8]
8. CTV.ca [9]
9. Yahoo UK [10] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.86.28.87 (talk) 04:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
10. Toronto Star [11]
11. Mizzima (English-language website) [12]
12. Democratic Voice Of Burma (English-language website) [13]
13. USA Today [14] Jpgs (talk)
14. Washington Post [15] Jpgs (talk) 12:38, 7 May 2008
15. The Guardian, UK [16]
16. National Post, Canada [17]
17. Bangkok Post, Thailand [18]
18. ABC, Australia [19]
19. Boston Globe [20] Jpgs (talk) 12:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
20. CBS [21]
21. Asia Observer [22] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk • contribs) 12:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
22. RTE, Ireland [23] (talk) 08:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
23. The Scotsman [24] (talk) 08:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
24. The Herald, Glasgow [25](talk) 08:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
25. Irish Times [26]
26. The Moderate Voice [27]
27. Sky News [28]
28. ITN [29]
29. The Press Association [30]
30. Agenzia Giornalistica Italia, Italy [31]
31. Independent Online, South Africa [32]
32. Reuters, India [33]
33. Buenos Aires Herald, Argentina [34] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angstriddenyouth (talk)
34. Forbes, NY [35]
35. Channel 4 News, UK [36]
36. Inquirer, Phillippines [37]
37. US Department of State, DC [38]
38. Howrah News Service, India [39]
39. ABC News [40] —Preceding unsigned comment added by Angstriddenyouth (talk • contribs) 20:00, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
40. Fox News [41]

[edit] Media referring to the country as Myanmar

1. Associated Press [42]
2. Reuters [43]
3. CNN [44]
4. MSNBC [45]
5. Fox News [46]
6. NY Times [47]
7. The Economist [48]
8. New Zealand Herald [49]
9. Times of India [50]
10. Hindustan Times [51]
11. The Hindu [52]
12. South China Morning Post [53]
13. Straits Times [54]
14. Yahoo US [55]
15. AFP [56]
16. China Daily [57]
17. Jerusalem Post [58]
18. Khaleej Times (UAE) [59]
19. NPR [60] Jpgs (talk) 12:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
20. ABC News (US) [61] Jpgs (talk) 12:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
21. CBS News [62] Jpgs (talk) 12:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
22. PBS News Hour [63] Jpgs (talk) 12:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
23. Wall Street Journal [64] Jpgs (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
24. New York Times [65] (requires subscription) Jpgs (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
25. Los Angeles Times [66] Jpgs (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
26. Chicago Tribune [67] Jpgs (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
27. New York Daily News [68] Jpgs (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
28. New York Post [69] (appears just to follow wire services; may have no policy) Jpgs (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
29. Philadelphia Inquirer [70] Jpgs (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
30. Houston Chronicle [71] Jpgs (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
31. San Francisco Chronicle [72] Jpgs (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
32. Miami Herald [73] Jpgs (talk) 12:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
33. Dallas Morning News [74]
34. Atlanta Journal-Constitution [75]
35. Seattle Post-Intelligencer [76]

[edit] Ratios

US Newspapers: Of the 10 top papers (in the US) by circulation[77]: 8 Myanmar, 2 Burma Jpgs (talk) 13:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This only represents the US, and not other English speaking countries, such as Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand etc.. where the name "Burma" is predominantly used by all newspapers.

The AP uses Myanmar and many of those sources above just recirculate AP stories on their websites. Roxi2 (talk) 20:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Google News Hits

(retrieved 6 May 2008. All instances have gone down since then)

Myanmar cyclone: 8,604
Burma cyclone: 8,184

Myanmar: 18,004
Burma: 12,497

• Realizing this is a tragedy... so far we have curious reporting in the media. When I checked Google News this late afternoon, running Myanmar cyclone against Burma cyclone, there were about 1,000 more results for Myanmar than there were for Burma. As I look tonight, results for Burma cyclone got 4,794 while Myanmar cyclone got only 4,670. If I restrict the search to just "Myanmar" or "Burma", however, Myanmar trounces with 13,549 to Burma's 9,116. I wonder what would happen if we restrict the search to media outside of the United Kingdom? -BaronGrackle (talk) 04:04, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

We call the country Burma in New Zealand. Heres a newslink from YahooXtra our main internet news provider. --210.86.28.87 (talk) 04:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

From a (highly unscientific) sampling of sites in various countries, this is what I got:

• Burma: UK, Australia, Canada, Thailand, New Zealand
• Myanmar: US, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, China

We use Burma in New Zealand mate. --210.86.28.87 (talk) 04:13, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Well not all of it apparently [78]. Anyway, I was referring media usage rather than common usage. Shameer (talk) 04:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm an ex-pat Brit living in New Zealand and have heard people use both Burma and Myanmar, but Myanmar seems to be more prevalent. I'm surprised no-one seems to have commented on how this is a generational thing - older people use the name that was common when they were younger (Burma) but most young people are familiar with Myanmar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.96.121.58 (talk) 06:00, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

'Everyone else' - care to prove that? 87.194.217.99 (talk) 13:32, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

FixedShameer (talk) 17:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Malaysia overwhelming uses Myanmar. Nil Einne (talk) 16:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

ASEAN uses Myanmar. ASEAN comprises of 10 countries, including Myanmar itself. __earth ^(Talk) 05:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Google hits

Burma = about 30,000,000 Myanmar = about 64,800,000

OK not very scientific but also not the answer I expected. It could just be bias by Google because the name change only just predates Google and the general availability of the Internet so electronic references outweight paper format and our memories (which probably pre-date the Internet). Based on this I would suggest that in the next 10 years the counts for Myanmar will even more outweight the counts for Burma and the "Burma" article title will become even more out of date. Like the metric system, and pounds, shilling and pence, are we just showing our age ? or is this a way of showing a political preference, a form of electronic boycott of a regime ?. A mixture of all I would guess.
But we're not here to report our opinion in the article but document reality. We have established certain organisations as reliable sources for many articles and the UN is one of them (e.g. if a reliable source says 'x' is a "terrorist" or a "disaster" then we can happily repeat that whereas if someone unreliable (e.g. any-old-politician or shock-jock) says it we edit that out. Aren't we being a bit biased by using the UN for one purpose that suits us but not accepting what else it says ? How can we judge what to use and what to drop from our reliable sources ? We use undue weight or the idea of neologism. The case for undue weight isn't clear and in fact of all references to Burma and Myanmar now in Google it is 1/3rd for Burma and 2/3rds for Myanmar. On the basis of trusting our reliable sources, on tipping our hat at undue weight it would seem Myanmar has the advantage.
I would suggest we do what the BBC does on its country page, [79] and do the following,
Redirect Burma to Myanmar and just state..."Myanmar, formerly Burma," Ttiotsw (talk) 06:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Union of Myanmar

Haven't looked through all the archived discussion, but haven't seen any thoughts on making the page Union of Myanmar. It would follow the same logic regarding China/People's Republic of China, Macedonia/Republic of Macedonia, to a lesser degree, Congo/Republic of Congo/Democratic Republic of Congo and Georgia/Geogria (country). While this uses the name of the State Peace and Development Council, it is the official name of the country, which is recognized by the United States, Canada, the United Nations, and other governments. Kaiser matias (talk) 06:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

That's the long form name and would be at odds with standard Wikipedia practice which is to use the short form. The examples you give are all deliberate exceptions because the short forms "China", "Macedonia", "Congo" and "Georgia" are all names claimed by multiple entities and thus very different situations from here. Timrollpickering (talk) 07:32, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Move article to Union of Myanmar, rewrite Burma to refer to the civilisation, incorporating the history currently within that article. Add a disambiguation to the top of the Burma article, pointing to the current political entity "Union of Myanmar". Redirect Myanmar to Union of Myanmar. This solution is modelled on how China is currently being handled. --~Cr∞nium 07:48, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

China is not a good model. The issue with China is that there are two current governments that claim all of China, and each occupy part of its geographic area. As a result, the official name for China is not unique, so trying to use the official name would not decide the question - you'd still have two names, Republic of China and People's Republic of China. The unwieldy solution there is to have three separate articles. Burma is not in the same situation, so there's no need to use an unwieldy solution here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Warren Dew (talk • contribs) 19:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Support 87.194.217.99 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 13:29, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

• "...it is the official name of the country, which is recognized by the United States, Canada, the United Nations, and other governments" Actually, it isn't recognized, at least by the U.S. Check out the CIA World Factbook link below: the U.S. government's official long-form name for the country is "Union of Burma". The point they're making is that this "Myanmar" government doesn't exist. Lovely, no? I notice that no one has been mad enough to seriously suggest we follow this example in our article. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The World Factbook also makes note that the country is known as the Union of Myanmar as well, albeit as a translation of the local name. And it would seem that this is not that different from the examples I pointed out. Burma in itself can be used to describe the entire historical context of the region, similar to China, Macednoia, and Congo. Specifically in regards to China, the more recognized state is located at it's full name to distinguish it from the historical region, as well as the lesser recognized government in Taiwan. Since most western governments have stated they don't recognize the government ruling under the name "Union of Myanmar," but rather one that uses the name "Burma," it seems very similar in my view to the China situation. The Union of Myanmar is the name of the current government controlling the country, Burma is the historical name of the region, and one would suppose that "Union of Burma" (used by the US State Department), would be the name of the democartic government that is/was involved with Aung San Suu Kyi. Kaiser matias (talk) 16:23, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

• I personally don't have much against this, but check out the most recent archive on Burma's talk page. Simultaneous to our last survey on the name, a proposal identical to yours was completely shot down by both sides. Of course, it may have just been that both sides felt we were "winning".-BaronGrackle (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CIA World Factbook

The CIA World Factbook calls it 'Burma'. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 13:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It's always been a great resource, with just a few sticking points to avoid, like economic facts, and descriptive text for communist nations and other nations we would rather didn't exist. Robbiemuffin (talk) 20:05, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Like Burma? The CIA World Factbook is obviously biased to official US policy. It is official US policy not to recognize the name change to Myanmar.--208.102.210.163 (talk) 23:16, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A bit of an oversimplification, but...

sometimes countries change their names. It's true. Persia is now Iran, Mesopotamia is Iraq, Turkey became the Ottoman Empire then back again, likewise with Russia and the Soviet Union, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland became the United Kingdom, the Holy Roman Empire became Germany, Ivory Coast is now Côte d'Ivoire, Siam is now Thailand, the list goes on and on. I won't even start with the Balkans and Eastern Europe, we'd be here all day.

The article should be named Myanmar. I admittedly know very little of the country and its political climate, and therefore can say with absolute certainty that I am completely neutral here. Arguing that the name should not be changed because you don't like the current administration simply holds no water - we are a neutral encyclopedia, what we think as editors doesn't matter. Yes, Burma is occasionally used colloquially to refer to the state of Myanmar, but so too is America used to refer to the United States, Russia was used to refer to the Soviet Union, Ivory Coast is used to refer to Côte d'Ivoire; again, the list is practically endless. The article needs to be moved to Myanmar.

Before decrying any specific examples I listed, bear in mind that I did say it was an oversimplification. faithless (^speak) 17:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I realise it is an over-simplification, but I'd just like to point out a number of the examples cited went through not just a change in name/government, but significant changes in terretorial possesions, i.e. Unions of countries, and various countries becoming independent. --210.86.28.87 (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My suggestion

Name the article Burma (Myanmar). --Zer0~Gravity ^{(Roger - Out)} 17:39, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

What difference does the name make ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.161.215.19 (talk) 18:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Clearly none to you ANONYMOUS Deamon138 (talk) 23:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No widely accepted name = Myanmar

This has been brought up before by someone else, but I thought I'd mention it again. From our official naming conventions: "If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local official name." Well? Recent media coverage shows that Myanmar solidly beats Burma by the hundreds or thousands. Myanmar is in all the other encyclopedias, even Britannica. In terms of common usage, Burma ONLY wins in historical books. While it can be argued that Burma is used as frequently as Myanmar, there is absolutely no way to claim that Burma is the single, undisputed, widely accepted English name. Since Myanmar is the local official name, then it wins in the case of a draw. Can anyone show that this dispute between Burma and Myanmar is NOT a draw, that Burma is decisively used more? You can't show it through media. You can't show it through Yahoo, Google, or any encyclopedia. You can't show it through "I hear everyone use Burma", since that is original research and is disputed as a fact. So? -BaronGrackle (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You make a very valid point here Deamon138 (talk) 23:55, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Burma was a widely accepted name before the junta. Shii (tock) 07:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed; it was used before the junta changed it. Our general guidelines address that too. Number 1 says:

• "The title: When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it." Again, you cannot show that Burma is widely accepted over Myanmar through media, encyclopedias, and so on and so forth. "This often will be a local name, or one of them; but not always. If the place does not exist anymore, or the article deals only with a place in a period when it held a different name, the widely accepted historical English name should be used." If this article were about a country that did not exist, or if it were about former Burma (as per the proposal above), then Burma would be a fine title. "If neither of these English names exist, the modern official name, in articles dealing with the present, or the modern local historical name, in articles dealing with a specific period, should be used. All applicable names can be used in the titles of redirects." The bold is added by me. I think the case is very clear here that naming conventions recommend Myanmar. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This article does not deal only with the present. (I'm not sure how important that is) --87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• No article deals ONLY in the present; everything has a history. This article does deal with a country that presently exists. -BaronGrackle (talk) 14:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
• This comment was recently posted above; I thought I'd replicate it here:

"No one doubts that there is a dispute about the name which leads some sources to use Myanmar and others to use Burma… The name of the Wikipedia article should be based on common English usage (as per Wikipedia guidelines) and this seems split between Burma and Myanmar so there's no compelling reason to change the article's name to Myanmar. Keep it how it is. Suitsyou (talk) 17:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)"

And, so, I direct you back to the point highlighted in the guidelines. The compelling reason IS BECAUSE common English usage is split, so we defer to the official name. -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

X-ray scattering techniques is an example of an article that deals only in the present. Be careful when making generalisations! How this means we should interpret the guidelines I don't know: the safest bet seems to be to create one called Burma about the history and one called Union of Myanmar about the present (the latter of which takes up a large part of the article and would fill an article on it's own). 87.194.217.99 (talk) 10:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong vs Incorrect

You people claiming that it's Burma have to realize something. Namely that right v wrong are not the same as correct v incorrect. Correctness is about FACTS which is what Wikipedia is meant to provide. Right/Wrongness is about POV e.g. it's "Murder is wrong" not "murder is incorrect." I think 99.9% of us here agree that an undemocratic system is wrong and therefore that the Myanmar government is wrong. However this is POV and should only belong in some sort of criticism section on the government and the country's name. While their government is wrong, its name change is still a fact and therefore correct. I mean since we're all so totally against this government shouldn't we then deny its existence on Wikipedia and deny that "Burma" has an undemocratic form of government? It would seem we should do that if the Burma-namers here get their way. While we're at it, since the Holocaust was wrong, we should make it incorrect too and delete all references to it anywhere on Wikipedia. Oh and for anyone who claims that Myanmar-name and the Holocaust aren't the same thing, I'm demonstrating the propositions logical fallacy by taking it to its extreme. Tell me if you still disagree that Holocaust/Myanmar aren't the same situation, when exactly does a dictatorial governments actions become extreme enough that we should document what they say rather than ignoring it like you want to? Quantitative answer please! Deamon138 (talk) 00:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

An illegal, undemocratic government cannot change the name of the country and have it recognised. That is why the United States and Great Britain, the two most important English speaking countries in the world, do not recognize it. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 00:30, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

And let's all remember this is the English Wikipedia, not the Hindu or Chinese Wikipedia. (referring to some Myanmar examples given a few sections above) --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 00:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be missing the point. Indians and Chinese use English too. The fact that the US and the UK have English as their native language doesn't given them the ultimate authority in English. Nil Einne (talk) 18:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It's in English, it's not for the English or on their behalf. Why do we accept that the British / US government calls it Burma, but deny that the "Burmese" government calls it Myanmar? Their is a POV issue with what the US and UK call Myanmar, they don't call it Burma for encyclopedic reasons; they are politically motivated to call the country Burma. The BBC and CIA are as questionable sources as they are simply going along with the respective governments. There really shouldn't be a question with this. Encyclopedic sources use Myanmar. Zelphi (talk) 13:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Iran and Persia

This seems to be a bit like the Iran Vs Persia debates of the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's. Iran officially asked the English world to stop calling it Persia and start calling it Iran, but it took until the 1960's before they did so. Encylopedias were also slow to make the switch-over. I'm not going to weigh in (I have an opinion but after reading the comments and responces here I really dont think there is any attempt to get a concensus, so why should I bother) but I'd just like to point out that this has happened before. 74.13.127.100 (talk) 06:52, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Wikipedia is not out to make a political statement. The name should reflect the popular consensus, that is, the name being used by English-speaking governments. For this reason the CIA World Factbook is an excellent example. Shii (tock) 07:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, I see no reason why English speaking government are the only consideration. The name used by other English speakers, native or not is just as important Nil Einne (talk) 19:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The CIA World Factbook was an amazing resource for it's time, except for economics and for unbiased coverage of a scant few countries we have disagreements with. Even in those cases, it is usually only in descriptive text that the bias shows. Nowadays, I'm pretty sure the people who compile it gather all their data up into their articles, and then come back and compare the articles to wikipedia as a way to spot check for errors. Robbiemuffin (talk) 20:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like an odd thing to be sure of. Do you work for them? 87.194.217.99 (talk) 10:21, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rangoon

If this city name has been changed on wikipedia from Rangoon to Yangon, even though the BBC and the rest of the English speaking world still refer to this as Rangoon. Even though i think this page should remain as Burma, how can there be double standards here?--Rockybiggs (talk) 09:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Myanmar is a political debate (who has the rights to change a country's name), whereas this is linguistic/cultural issue. Danes don't call their capital Copenhagen, yet I see no petition for renaming said page into København.Geira (talk) 14:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

A lot of English language sources refer to it as Yangon, same as Myanmar Nil Einne (talk) 16:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the point though is that the Rangoon/Yangon naming issue is largely the same as the Burma/Myanmar one. We should either have Burma and Rangoon, or Myanmar and Yangon. Having Burma and Yangon is inconsistent. Cynical (talk) 23:40, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The reason Yangon was not changed was because there was no overwhelming vote drawn there after the monks were in the news. The swarm of people came to the Myanmar article and, though there was no consensus, their sheer number of votes allowed it to change. Yangon had neither consensus nor a voter swarm. To make the articles consistent, we'd need either consensus or an overwhelming vote to change either article. It's not likely. -BaronGrackle (talk) 23:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more on this one. We should use/combine either Myanmar/Yangon or Burma/Rangoon. To be more precise this "dispute" always turns around Arakanese (Rakhinese) vs. Burmese.Sovann Maccha (talk) 00:31, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why the everyday person isn't reliable on this

I've seen lots of arguments for naming the article "Burma" because everyone in the everyday world (e.g. friends and family) know it as Burma and most people have never heard of Myanmar. So what if they've never heard of it? Most people have never heard of a Riemannian manifold yet that exists. Most would be confused that triangles don't have to have 180 degrees. Besides the consensus of the layman is irrelevant when it comes to encyclopaedic topics on politics. Here, what the experts say is what matters. If you still think what "Bob"down the street matters on this issue, then clearly you've never heard of say snopes. As an idea of how wrong Bob can be, look at this example. Most people I've ever known (including myself) have believed that urban myth, but it's not true.

Besides, our job on Wikipedia is not to tell people that an undemocratic system is wrong: if we're good enough, they should be able to work that out themselves by reading a balanced article giving the fors and againsts for the Myanmar regime. We don't go "the regime is wrong," we go "here are the arguments for this regime by some people, and here are the criticisms of this regime by other people." Then it's left up to the reader to decide is opinion on the regime. Simple as.

Simple as in dumb. Arguments like "democratic" and "wrong" are derailing the debate. The only valid point is if the current regime is the nation's accepted government, de facto or otherwise. If they are not, they have no legislative powers to change the name of the nation, and accepting the change is legitimizing their rule (which is why most alienated Burmese refuse to accept the name change). Geira (talk) 14:44, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

We should make it clear that the countries name is Myanmar, but also show in the article that the name change was controversial. Deamon138 (talk) 20:49, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

• Just like to point out that the article China is about the People's Republic of China. Just because PRC is the official name doesn't mean the article should use it. The article should use the most widely-accepted name. There are many precedents for this: spelling in the English language is based on how wide acceptance is. Same with scientific facts on Wikipedia (albeit the acceptance in that case is based on people that are scientifically trained). --24.3.21.56 (talk) 20:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

People's Republic of China IS the most widely accepted name as is Myanmar n00b. "Just because PRC is the official name doesn't mean the article should use it" Err no that's exactly why it SHOULD use it. Also, China has an authoritarian oft-criticized government yet the UN recognizes it as PR of C, yet it doesn't recognize Taiwan because China doesn't recognize it. That is how Wikipedia should present the facts: that Taiwan is an unrecognized country and Burma is now Myanmar. Criticisms of this belong in the criticism section of each article. I come to Wikipedia and the general internet for information about politics when I want a balanced viewpoint. We get the Daily Mail (right biased newspaper) and my family and some of my friends tend to have opposite political positions to me so this is where I come to see both sides of an argument. Don't ruin Wikipedia!

United Nations member states#Seat of China: "With the understanding of the Governor and the Chairman, I will briefly mention that membership into the UN ultimately needs to be decided by the Member States of the United Nations. Membership is given to a sovereign country. The position of the United Nations is that the People's Republic of China is representing the whole of China as the sole and legitimate representative Government of China. The decision until now about the wish of the people in Taiwan to join the United Nations has been decided on that basis. The resolution (General Assembly Resolution 2758) that you just mentioned is clearly mentioning that the Government of China is the sole and legitimate Government and the position of the United Nations is that Taiwan is part of China." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deamon138 (talk • contribs) 21:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the Riemannian manifold thing, most people don't refer to it as that because they don't refer to it at all. However, lots of people do refer to Burma/Myanmar, and if the majority refer to it as Burma (which, incidentally, it seems they don't), then that defines what the English word for it is: we, as with dictionaries, are just here to record what people call it, not to decide. --87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:34, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Peeps in Thailand be referring to the place as Burma. I was all up in that place in 03'. They be like "don't call it Myanmar or you be recognizing the military junta". They like all serious and stuff when they spittin out they thoughts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.186.51.120 (talk) 15:09, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Word. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 10:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reason for the renaming?

Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but when scanning the article and this discussion I didn't find an answer:

Why did the junta decide to change the name from Burma to Myanmar? Is there a particular rationale behind this?

From what I gather there is precious little difference in ethnological or ideological meaning behind it, so... what gives? --Syzygy (talk) 07:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Good question! Possibly an attempt to distance themselves from Colonial times? --87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:35, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The name change is briefly mentioned in the Etmology and origins section, and then discussed further in Names of Burma. To put it shortly, both Burma and Myanmar have the same origin, but through the different tones of the word, a practice common in East Asian languages, the words have become distinct. The name change happened because the government wanted to abandon the colonial spelling of the country and adopt a more Burmese spelling of the country, similar to what India has done with its cities (Calcutta/Kolkata, Bombay/Mumbai, etc.) Kaiser matias (talk) 16:16, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Can someone summarize the sides in the naming dispute?

I was surprised to find that the article title was Burma and not Myanmar. I thought the nation had officially changed its name, but what do I know. There's a lot of discussion on this page. Can someone summarize the reasons for/against renaming the article to Myanmar? Morecromulent (talk) 17:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, it'l be Myanmar again as soon as the radical minority thinks the public exposure opportunity has passed. It's happened twice already that I know of at Wikipedia. It'll keep happening until that activist they have under house arrest dies of old age, I think. Robbiemuffin (talk) 20:42, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, it'll be Burma again as soon as the right-wing majority find out they're backing the wrong horse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geira (talk • contribs) 15:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't oversimplify the issue. I'm here because I was telling people what a great-sounding word Myanmar is (yes I'm a giant geek) and none of them knew what it meant. Not just a PR stunt, a genuine linguistic issue resulting from the wonderful diversity of the English language. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 10:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] For Burma

• More westerner recognize the name Burma than Myanmar. (there is more asian who recognise Myanmar)
• Burma is the country's historical name.
• The country's government that changed the name was not elected and is not legitimate.
• Major English-speaking governments, including the United States and United Kingdom, officially recognize Burma over Myanmar. (but US State Dept used the term Myanmar as much as Burma.)
• Historical books and scholarly articles use Burma overwhelmingly.
• Many Western English-language media sources use Burma.
• Both the people of Burma and their language are known as Burmese, despite any name change.
• Most international aid and Human Rights organizations use Burma [80] [81] [82] [83]
• The article was previously called Myanmar but was changed after "a significant majority of editors" favored Burma (by more than 2:1). See more arguments on previous discussion here. —Preceding comment by 76.236.65.49 (talk) 07:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] For Myanmar

• Just as many people recognize Myanmar as Burma.
• Myanmar is the country's current name.
• Myanmar is the name used by the United Nations.
• English-speaking nations that choose to not use Myanmar do so for political reasons, not for reasons of identification.
• Online encyclopedias and other resources use Myanmar overwhelmingly.
• A large majority of English media sources use Myanmar.
• There are other examples in which the name of a people is different than the name of their country (e.g. Dutch, British, in some cases Persian).
• The article was previously called Myanmar but was changed without consensus.—Preceding unsigned comment added by BaronGrackle (talk • contribs) 17:53, 8 May, 2008 (UTC)

Some people are opposed because most English-speaking governments (US, UK, Canada, Australia) don't recognized the name change as it was done by what they consider an illegal revolution. They officialy know the country as Burma, and therefore so should Wikipedia. Others feel that since the official name of the country is indeed Myanmar, which is recognized by other nations and organizations (Russia, China, UN), and Wikipedia has no place to decide if ruling governments are legal or not and have the ability to change the name of the country. Kaiser matias (talk) 17:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

- Both "More" and "Just as many" can't be true in the description of how many recognize each name. YAC (talk) 18:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

You are correct; the answer lies in disagreement. I would say that just as many recognize Myanmar; but, I wanted to be fair to the Burma position. This is one of the primary disagreements in the article naming discussion. -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the majority of media organisations use Myanmar, I've not seen any news outlet use Myanmar. BBC, ITN (Channel 4 and C5), Sky News (and checking on the internet) RTE, Deutche Welle, France 24, Voice Of America and Radio Australia use Burma. The only one I can find that uses Myanmar is NHK. Duke toaster (talk) 18:58, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I was basing it on the Media sources listed above and the Google News hits. -BaronGrackle (talk) 19:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Removed the parenthesized counter-arguments from the Burma section because there were none given on the Myanmar section.

The reason for the 'more' and 'just as many' thing is actually that more Western people use Burma but roughly the same number of English-speaking people from all places use it. Personally I don't see how where you are geographically gives you more of a right to define how language is used, so I think only the 'just as many people say one as the other' is relevant. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 10:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hold off, then rename

So, according to the official naming conventions above, the lack of consensus here means we should simply use Myanmar. If you have a disagreement with that we would need to take this debate one level up, to the policy itself. Unfortunately changing the name right now would probably cause an edit war in the cyclone article, as it did last fall. The constitutional referendum is also this Saturday. How about we hold off until next week and then change the name across all Burma-related articles? Shii (tock) 22:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

• Suddenly changing the name of all "Burma" articles would certainly get you a warning and possibly get you banned. :-) Despite my whining, those of us pro-Myanmar folk failed to act appropriately when the article was changed without consensus (I personally thought it was meant to be an actual majority-rule vote; I learned differently later), so now the weight is on pro-Myanmar to gain consensus before the name is changed. If a constitutional referendum is coming up this Saturday, though, then perhaps the country will be in the media even more... showing off how frequently it is called Myanmar. -BaronGrackle (talk) 22:48, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Baron Grackle. You decribe yourself as being "pro-Myanmar." In God's name, why? It's like saying "I'm pro-torture, rape and oppression." In all honesty, I'd like to know why you are so keen to use the name imposed by the Military Junta??Angstriddenyouth (talk) 01:47, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Yikes! Good thing I was rereading most of these comments; I missed this one in the deluge! I am Anti-Myanmar's government. I am Pro-Using-The-Correct-Name. I'm so "keen" on using this name not because it was imposed by the military junta, but because it is the name of that country. It's used in English media and resources. Did the Soviet Union or the Third Reich crumble because civilized nations of the world pretended they didn't exist? -BaronGrackle (talk) 06:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Lol -- yeah good point. If you're against the government, be against the government. If you just want to free the lady over there, that's a nice, noble thing to believe in too. I think the correct vs right argument above adresses that fairly eloquently, though. With wikipedia, I want neutral material: or at least material that is as neutral as neutral can be. So: I'm pro torture, rape and oppression. At least in that, I'd rather they weren't called almost-killing, sexual conquest and tredding. Robbiemuffin (talk) 20:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

US State Dept just issue a statement addressing Myanmar, so if seem that Bush is only useing Burma because of his lack in vocab. :P 60.54.105.186 (talk) 07:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I've read this whole thing and this "hold off and rename" idea makes the most sense to me. Both sides make good points. This is still a new issue. --Npnunda (talk) 21:32, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it should be voted on. I also don't think your (our) interpretation of the official naming conventions is necessarily correct; perhaps they need to be clarified. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 10:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Voted on? Is this a referendum?

OK, then, consider this is a hand raised for using our own naming conventions. If we don't hold ourselves to our own rules, then what becomes Wikipedia? Time and time again we as editors with great intentions have scrabbled over these points, and what we usually remember, in the end, is that it is our neutrality that must prevail - no matter how impassioned, how strongly we may feel.

Myanmar (Burma) - Politically, I hate it. But we call it "Wikipedia" not "Elizabeth's Encyclopedia of Opinionated Opinions."

Just saying. --Elizabeth aka EBY3221 (talk) 23:58, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Civilization vs. Regime

Why not include the history, civilization, and cultural information under Burma, but references to the current government under Myanmar, and have both articles? This is how China is treated, and this is essentially how Gaul (a historical term) is treated (Gaul does not redirect to France), how the Holy Roman Empire is treated (it does not redirect to Germany). The Soviet Union does not redirect to Russia; the Third Reich does not redirect to Germany; Francia does not even redirect to France. (East Francia is not even the same article as Austrasia, even though the two have been used synonymously!) There seems to be every reason to split the article in two, separating the historical from the modern government. The Jade Knight (talk) 06:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Your example of Soviet Union redirecting to Russia - They are different things, i.e. the territories are different. In Burma v Myanmar, it is the same territory, it's just a name change. Alex Holowczak (talk) 17:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC}

As was The Third Reich vs. Germany, Manchuria vs. Manchukuo, Democratic Kampuchea vs. Cambodia, the Confederate States of America vs. the Southern United States, etc. There is a good reason these articles are separated. The Jade Knight (talk) 05:20, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Also note that, not only is the USSR separate from the Russian Federation, but so is the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The Jade Knight (talk) 05:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Gaul was similar to France but not the same thing. Besides the Romans conquered it, incorporating it into their empire and it wasn't until the splitting of the Carolingian Empire that France(ish) came about. The Holy Roman Empire was also not the same area as Germany: it usually contained Germany during its history but also most of the time lots more too. The Soviet Union wasn't the same as Russia> Russia was one of the states that were part of the USSR, as was the Ukraine, most of the "-stan" countries e.t.c. The Third Reich was not the name of the country under the Nazis, it is more a term to describe it relative to history. Same with "Nazi Germany." It was more called the German Empire or German Reich (same thing really). Francia came after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, so not only is Francia not the same as Gaul, its not the same as the Holy Roman Empire, nor modern day France. Francia was much larger than France. There appear to be some differences between East Francia and Austrasia, but I can see your point here that they are nearly the same.

However, two historical entities deserve their own separate articles if they are divided in history (e.g. Gaul and France) or if they are different from each other geographically. This is not the case with Burma/Myanmar as both names before and after 1989 occupied the same space. China before the revolution Mao et al was still the same place so its need for two pages isn't due to this it's due to the fact that another page can provide more detail on a contemporary subject (and China does have a lot more history, recent or otherwise, than Burma). I think you were talking about the fact there's History of China and History of the Republic of China but notice how the former has info on the latter too. The latter is just there to go into more detail than on the first one. I don't think this would be appropriate to do with Burma/Myanmar since it doesn't have a lot of history compared to China. Deamon138 (talk) 22:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

But notice that the Kingdom of Germany is in a different article than Germany, Austrasia, and East Francia (and the Third Reich). The Khmer Rouge are in a different article than Cambodia (which is in turn separate from Democratic Kampuchea). Manchuria and Manchukuo are in separate articles, as are the Confederate States of America and the Southern United States, the Republic of Texas and Texas, and the Kingdom of Hawaii and Hawaii. Or notice the three articles separating Hungary, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. And you haven't addressed my mention of the Third Reich, which is probably the closest parallel (along with Kampuchea). Really, there seems to be plenty of reason to split the two. And I could probably keep adding examples to this list, it's really not that hard to find them. The Jade Knight (talk) 05:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Look how many articles there are dealing with different aspects of Britain:

United_kingdom (Official government-sponsored name - equivalent of 'Union of Myanmar') Dealing mostly with politics and culture.

British_Isles Dealing with geography (NB: dealing with the present) and history.

and multiple articles dealing with the history in greater detail:

History_of_the_United_Kingdom

Roman_Britain

Medieval_Britain

Early_Modern_Britain

Kingdom_of_Great_Britain

87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:06, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The same with Ireland and Republic_of_Ireland, though they are geographically slightly different.

Most articles seem to have an accompanying 'history of... ' article, and some have a 'politics of... ', so maybe there could be 'history of Burma', 'politics of Myanmar', and the main article could be called 'Myanmar (Burma)'. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Constantinople

Yugoslavia

87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

China: There are two Chinas, one good, one bad.

Soviet Union & Russia: The Soviet Union was a combination of Russia, Ukraine, Karelia, Tuva, and several other countries, whereas Russia is just Russia.

Holy Roman Empire: The Holy Roman Empire is not Germany, the Germans called themselves Holy Romans, but they are actually Germans.--4.245.76.125 (talk) 20:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article Style

The article states that it was formerly known as Burma, but is now known as Myanmar. That says that Burma was the historical name, and Myanmar is the current name. It may be unknown to the masses, but that is not the point. The article says that Myanmar is the "proper" name of the country, and only political reasons prevent use of Myanmar. So, either the article should be titled Myanmar, or the introduction (in particular) should come up with a better justification for going against the official name. Since the "Union of Myanmar" is given for the title the country would like to be known as, Myanmar ought to be the title of the page, with a redirect from Burma, and from Union of Myanmar (if one does not already exist). Alex Holowczak (talk) 18:05, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree this should be done. Surely we've reached a consensus on this by now people? Deamon138 (talk) 22:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Take a vote, if you like, to get a general idea. But see my suggestion above. The Jade Knight (talk) 05:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken the article does not say "Myanmar is the proper name of the country and only political reasons prevent its use". And if it does, then all you are pointing out is that there is a contradiction in the article: the article says Myanmar is the proper name, but it's called Burma. There are two ways to resolve this, change the name of the article, or change where is says Myanmar is the proper name. Regarding countries having official 'given' titles, I have already pointed out that language is not dictated by a minority. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:18, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sorry

Burma-Shave v. Myanmar-Shave. Sorry, I couldn't help it ;-) --hydnjo talk 23:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Policy

And this quote comes directly from Larry Sanger:

Wikipedia does not officially take a stand on what the country should be called. (diff)

-76.236.65.49 (talk) 07:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

That was six and a half years ago and, more importantly, Larry Sanger is no more an authority here than anyone else. Yes he played an important role in Wikipedia's founding, but he's just another editor, just like all of us (well, maybe not Jimbo :P). Don't know if anyone else has seen it, but Slate just ran an article about this very topic. Cheers, faithless (^speak) 08:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

As one who believes in Democracy as the most natural political system in use today, I believe the people who comprise a nation's populace control the name of their state and not necessarily the government. It has been reported that the people of Burma still refer to their country using the historical reference and not Myanmar. For this reason, and until the People of Burma decide to change the name, Burma should remain Burma. Tmurt (talk) 11:49, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

How the hell do you know what the people of Myanmar do? Most of them are too busy being beaten up by the government (who don't let them speak their minds so no one knows what they want) and don't speak English so I suspect your claims are complete nonsense. Nil Einne (talk) 23:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Well said Nil. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Zaire

There are valid arguments on both sides of the naming. But I think some people are missing the point altogether. This isn't an issue of common usage, or Deutschland vs Germany. The "fact" of the matter is that there no longer exists a country called Burma. The best analogy I can think of is to Zaire. To the extent that English speakers know anything about the country, it's Zaire, not the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But that doesn't change the fact that Zaire no longer exists. Now, if you want to contest the SPDC's legitimacy in changing the name, that's valid, and an appropriate discussion. But the name of the country, now, is The Democratic Republic of the Congo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.101.140.240 (talk) 16:19, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I always hear "DR Congo" in the media an elsewhere now, and assume most people know Zaïre changed its name. OTOH Burma is still the widely-accepted English name, at least in the UK media, and the opposition groups oppose the name change. So retaining "Burma" seems best. --79.75.109.181 (talk) 13:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I didn't even know what Zaïre referred to until someone told me the other day. I always call it DR Congo. Also, see the Britain articles above: different articles for different entities. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:21, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Add "Myanmar" in Parantheses

The simplest solution is to title the article "Burma (Myanmar)". It's an accurate title. TobyzMama (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2008 (UTC)TobyzMama

-No, because people will want "Myanmar (Burma)" instead... :P —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.246.94.62 (talk) 19:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Google maps uses Myanmar (Burma) 87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Then why not call it "Bmyuanrmamar"... o.o 84.202.236.123 (talk) 11:28, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] English

English is not just what the U.S or British government says English is.

So the point that the U.S or U.K government calls it Burma is moot. The U.S and U.K government can call shoes "XXXs" but if no one uses the phrase, it doesn't matter. Governments don't hold a monopoly on language, especially not one as widespread as English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.225.211 (talk) 21:37, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

However, the majority of people who read this encyclopedia are from the United States or Britain, along with many from Australia and New Zealand who also use Burma. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 00:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

And an equal amount of people also use Myanmar in those countries. Kaiser matias (talk) 01:47, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I reason, the United Nations call it Myanmar, so Wikipedia should call it Myanmar. Who cares what the English-speaking governments think? Wikipedia doesn't represent them. The UN, however, represents the world. --78.149.134.38 (talk) 05:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

When did that happen? 72.134.41.242 (talk) 05:51, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Lol the United Nations doesn't represent the world where the hell did that 'fact' come from?? --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 11:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Good point. The UN, by the way, represents member governments. Or rather, member governments represent themselves at the UN. I reckon that most people do not feel properly represented by the UN anyway. Trom120 (talk) 16:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Liancourt Rocks precedent

Looking at similar issues in wikipedia, is there a neutral name that could be used for the country which can be the basis of a reasonable consensus?

Just as a point of view, "Union of Myanmar" is probably a more appropriate name than "Myanmar" if we wanted to go with "what the government wants us to call the country," but I largely WP:DGAF.Somedumbyankee (talk) 03:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Not really. The government calls the country Myanmar for short, or Union of Myanmar in full. They don't call the country Burma Nil Einne (talk) 23:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The name is Myanmar

For those who live in a very stable country like the UK it might be very difficult to understand a rapid swift change in a country name. However we should take a look WHY this particular country wore called Burma and WHY they changed to Myanmar. If the dictators rules Myanmar who rules Burma? So Burma is and invisible state? If you ask for a visa to go to this country, maybe to help then in this tragic situation, who are you going to ask for, to Burma or to Myanmar? You got my answer.

LOL. If you get in and manage to give some aid/food to the locals and the gov't grabs you and tortures you and shoots you, what country name will your family use when they talk about your death? 72.134.41.242 (talk) 05:48, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use Parnentheses

No matter what, you are going to offend, but would the party who doesn't get the title they want really be MORE offended to see their preferred name in parenthesees? Unfortunately, a NO CONSENSUS doesn't get you too far since you HAVE to title the article something. But the parenthesees idea, whether Burma (Myanmar) or Myanmar (Burma) seems to be an incremental improvement. Balonkey (talk) 06:01, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] There is no argument whatsoever for calling this article 'Burma'

(Obviously there is. See above. Let's do without the Grand, sweeping, "I am right and you are wrong" statements please.)Angstriddenyouth (talk) 20:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Imagine my shock upon finding this article's name, that there isn't an article for Siam, Rhodesia, or Formosa!

I'm sorry folks, I hate the Burmese government, I really do, this week more than ever, but this is an online encyclopedia. And, like it or not, this country's name is MYANMAR. I realize the political history behind it, yada yada yada, but letting something as silly as politics get in the way of information on an INFORMATIONAL encyclopedia is petty and illogical. I would certainly however, be willing to have the name be Myanmar (Burma), but that's it. The name of that country east of Bangladesh and west of Thailand is Myanmar, and it has been for twenty years. Sure, the country's had a lot of history under the name of Burma, but names change. There is no article named Abyssinia. There is no article named Ceylon. There is no article named Persia. And where are people getting that 'Burma' is an English term for Myanmar??? 'Cause it's not. The official name is Pyidaung-su Myanma Naing-Ngan. I see something translate-able into 'Myanmar' but I see nothing resembling Burma. As for usage, it's interchangeable, and when it's interchangeable, you go with the official term.

The country is Myanmar, the article is Myanmar. End of.TheLemonOfIchabod (talk) 08:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Moved comment from main talk page to this dedicated page since this is where it belongs.Somedumbyankee (talk) 09:21, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The CIA World Factbook calls it Burma. And they even provide their reasoning:

note: since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the US Government did not adopt the name, which is a derivative of the Burmese short-form name Myanma Naingngandaw

In other words, the name "Myanmar" is a name that is only approved by their military authorities, and this is not even approved by the people through their representatives, the legislature. It is not as recognized as much as Burma, and thus many people still call it Burma.

Besides, this is the English Wikipedia, which is meant to be used by American, British, and other Western democracies. And as stated in the article, most of them still use the term 'Burma' to refer to the country, and the people as 'Burmese'. --124.107.144.45 (talk) 10:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

What? Only Western democracies are allowed to use wikipedia? I guess we should tell all the poor Indians et al who work so hard on FAs to bugger off then Nil Einne (talk) 23:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to have to disagree with 123.107.144.45. As discussed above, the CIA World Factbook reflects U.S. policy, which recognizes the country as "Burma". However, since the country's government changed the official English name of the country from Burma to Myanmar, it would make sense for Wikipedia to do so, as that would reflect the intentions of the state that is being named, and whether or not that state was democratically elected (Wikipedia should not be making political judgments), the state is what controls the region. There are several countries that don't have democratic regimes for which Wikipedia uses the regime's chosen name. --Alethiareg (talk) 19:29, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Erm, isn't the English title "Burma"? And since this is the English Wikipedia, the title would then be correct. weburiedoursecretsinthegarden 10:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

• The English title is Burma or Myanmar, depending on which source you look at (see discussion above; most English media sources and virtually all encyclopedias/atlases use Myanmar). The Burmese title (Burmese the language; like Persian the language) is Myanma. Since Myanmar is commonly used AND official in English, Wikipedia conventions prefer its use. -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Myanmar? No!

You will see that the article Burma is called Burma, not Myanmar. Beyond all else Wikipedia should use one name as a constant, not Both. To summarise this issue, Burma was always called Burma until the Military Junta renamed it, what power does the Junta have to rename the country in English? If Germany demanded that all english speaking countries referred to it as Deutschland, well we'd laugh at the suggestion. The BBC and CBC refer to Burma as Burma, and nearly all english speakers know the country as Burma, so based on the argument below for keeping the name 'Bangkok' Burma should be used in all places on Wikipedia.

Bangkok Article:

Surely the capital is not Bangkok? It's every pedant's pet "fact" that the capital is Krung Thep (well, at least the short name is). We're talking about the same city here, but it hasn't been called Bangkok by the Thais for over 200 years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.9.80.254 (talk) 12:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC) Yes, it is called Krung Thep in Thailand. But this is the English language wikipedia, and almost everyone who speaks English will know the city by the name Bangkok, and not Krung Thep. Why else is the BMA uses that acronym and not KMA? The information that in Thailand it known by a different name is placed as a footnote directly after the name, that should be enough for the pedants. andy (talk) 17:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

• Comes up again and again. If the vast majority of media news sources, atlases, encyclopedias, and textbooks referred to the country as Deutschland... or if the U.N. recognized its English name as Deutschland, while the U.S. and U.K. released very specific instructions over why they do NOT call the country Deutschland... if the BBC published a news article called "Germany or Deutschland?"... if Wikipedia's article on "Deutschland" had been moved to "Germany" without consensus... then yes, we'd probably be having this argument there. Cross-apply to Bangkok, or any other country/city you want. -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
• I have never, EVER, heard of Bangkok referred to as Krung Thep or Germany as Deutschland in English either by Thais, Germans, at the UN, or anywhere else. On the other hand, I very often hear Burma referred to as Myanmar in ENGLISH. Clearly your argument is nonsense and Baron's explaination may help you understand why. Perhaps it helps when you consider there is a difference between an ENGLISH NAME and an English transliteration of a foreign name. The former may be the latter, but the latter is often not the former Nil Einne (talk) 23:30, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Check this out:

Check out Talk:Kiev/naming. Going by the consensus and resulting precedent set there, this article should surely remain as Burma. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 12:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

• Not much precedent. Compare the number of Google News hits of Kyiv to Kiev, and see which name takes the lead in Encyclopedia Britannica. Then, after studying Kiev's predominance, explain how Myanmar creams Burma in those very same sources. -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The French Wikipedia

The French Wikipedia call it neither Burma nor Mynamar, they call it Birmanie [84]. So surely if the French use their French name for it, surely on the English wiki we should use our English name? --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 12:10, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

• Myanmar IS the English name of the country (or at least A English name, and the official one to boot). -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

You would be correct if it weren't for the fact you're wrong. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 18:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

And you would be taken seriously if it werent for the fact that you were filibustering. Sarvagnya 19:54, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

• I'm glad that you agree we should rename it to Myanmar finally Nil Einne (talk) 23:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Standards

The criteria for NPOV demands that the decision for what to call a country does not depend on majority opinion or even what a particular government prefers. The government of...well, the country we're talking about here...is not qualified to determine what Wikipedia will call it, nor is the government of the United States, China, Mozambique, or Lichtenstein.

Nor is any person on this site. Wikipedia contributors are individuals, each with an opinion, and I'm sorry to say that when it comes to cold, hard facts, nobody's opinion matters at all. It matters not if ten thousand contributors insist that 2+2=5, it still ain't so. In fact, it matters not if they say 2+2=4; it is not a legitimate fact until it is properly sourced. When The Journal of the American Arithmetical Society says that 2+2=4, it's a fact worthy of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia standards require that only independently verifiable facts may be included in articles. Since the "correct" name of this country is a matter of opinion, like many other countries, I suggest that Wikipedia recognize an international governing body as being an authoritative source for this sort of data. Furthermore, I suggest that Wikipedians arbitrarily accept the judgement of the United Nations as a relatively neutral international governing body in matters of the proper names of sovereign nations.

If the United Nations refers to the country as Myanmar, then Wikipedia can title the related article Myanmar using the United Nations as the authoritative source. Likewise, any other name change endorsed by the UN ought to be reflected on Wikipedia without dispute.

71.110.219.107 (talk) 23:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually while I support the usage of Myanmar, basically the UN just uses whatever the government uses, so basically by arguing to use the UN's name, you are arguing to use what the government prefers. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this, I support it, but it's important consideration for the discussion Nil Einne (talk) 23:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use UN own convention in English

Many recent changes are adopted by all when cities or country change names. Pekin = Beijing, Bombay = Mumbay, etc.

Anyway, an easy solution for this controversy is to use the list of countries as per the United Nation´s own English language page listing its members: http://www.un.org/members/list.shtml

It would also match our own "featured" list article: United Nations member states. It would be somehow ironic that our own article is "featured" and says things that we consider wrong. The lists (as well as the UN´s list of members) says Myanmar. Anagnorisis 01:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Moved comment to appropriate page.Somedumbyankee (talk) 01:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The UN is obligated to call a country whatever that country's leaders tell the UN to call it. If someone took over France tomorrow and renamed it: "UNcowards", then the UN would be obligated to call it that. Of course the rest of us would still continue to call it France. The article does a good job of explaining the differences in names. Also, we still call East Timor, East Timor and not Timor-Leste Roxi2 (talk) 02:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The UN does not have to refer to a country by what that countries government says. Example would be Macedonia. The Macedonian government refers to themselves as Macedonia, and some other governments do as well. But Greece is opposed to this, as they have a region called Macedonia. So in all international bodies (the UN, the IOC, etc), Macedonia is referred to as the "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." The UN does follow what local governments want; it follows what the Security Council, and to a lesser extent, the General Assembly, want. Kaiser matias (talk) 03:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The UN only refers to a country in the manner that the UN-recognized government prefers. I couldn't go to the UN and demand that the United States be called "Doodooland" because the UN does not officially recognize my legitimacy. Once the recognized government settles on a name, the UN will adopt that nomenclature. I suggest Wikipedia adopt the UN as a recognized authority on national identity in the same way that the American Cancer Society is an authority on cancer, NASA is an authority on space travel, and the New York Times is an authority on current events. Not every Wikipedian will agree with the UN's judgement, but it at least establishes a somewhat neutral, external source for resolving these sorts of questions. 71.110.219.107 (talk) 03:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm from Singapore, one of the countries in South-East Asia where Myanmar is located. In Asia, and in ASEAN, the country is officially called "Myanmar" (by the various officials in SEA countries, by Asian media, etc.). Pure and Simple. I don't understand what is there to argue about. The Western media (that's you, BBC and US media) would like to call the country Burma because they dislike the Myanmar junta-rule, just as they are pretty much non-neutral over the Tibet situation in China. I hated the current military rule in Myanmar as well, but until the regime is changed, the official name IS "Myanmar". Atticuslai (talk) 05:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ISO 3166 International Standard

The International Standard on country names calls it Myanmar - they've got some fairly smart people to think about these things, so maybe we could follow their lead Tom.kirk (talk) 10:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

ISO also only recognizes BC/AD dating, however on wikipedia we also encounter the ridiculous BCE/CE dating. So the ISO is hardly a widely accepted source on Wikipedia --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 11:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

What is the ISO clause or number for the BC/AD? =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Let's try to streamline out some of the chaff...

This is a big discussion with lots of strong opinions; it's unlikely it'll be resolved soon. But we can probably make a lot more progress if we strive to avoid a few arguments that're important, but not entirely germane to this precise issue (I'd also recommend avoiding the constant "well the name _is_ X" statements, which add exactly nothing to the discussion--it should be clear at this point that your opponents don't accept your authority on the matter ;) ).

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names):

Our naming policy provides that article names should be chosen for the general reader, not for specialists. By following English usage, we also avoid arguments about what a place _ought_ to be called, instead asking the less contentious question, what it _is_ called. If English usually calls a place by a given name, use it... This is the English Wikipedia; its purpose is to communicate with English-speaking readers. English does not have an Academy; English usage is determined by the consensus of its users, not by any government.

I hate the military junta too, but concerns over whether "Myanmar" endorses that government are entirely misplaced here.

I hate the lingering effects of Western imperialism too, but concerns over whether "Burma" endorses that imperialism are entirely misplaced here.

Before you respond further to this discussion, please examine your motives to see how much your personal "ought" is playing into your position. I know we're all passionate about this issue (and we should be--either way, it's about people who've been oppressed!), but we need to compartmentalize our decision making, find the "most widely accepted English name in a modern context", and use that English name despite our other feelings on the matter. I personally despise "Myanmar" for political, linguistic, and sociological reasons and think that English speakers shouldn't adopt it; but if it can be demonstrated that it has been adopted by the majority of native English speakers (and the Google results make me fear that it may have), then the name change will be appropriate for Wikipedia. The conversation here should stick to the relevant issue--determining native English usage--and not detour into politics, "respect", condemnation of dictators, or which governments and organzations prefer which names. Elmo iscariot (talk) 13:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I think I had a rather good solution to the issue (up at civilization vs. regime), but it seems to have been rather ignored so that people could continue to bicker over the name? The Jade Knight (talk) 07:32, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I think we should identify what the minor sub-issues are and prune them off by trying to reach a consensus on them.87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:13, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] De Jure Versus De Facto

To judge this, we must decide if Wikipedia is going to go by technical terms or commonly accepted ones. (de jure vs de facto) Wikipedia and wikipedians need to be consistent here, because if you look up China, you will not get the country. You have to look up People's Republic of China.

China = Commonly Accepted Name

PRC = Wikipedia Article Referring to China

America = Commonly Accepted Name

United States = Wikipedia Artical Referring to America

Russia = Commonly Accepted Name

Soviet Union = Wikipedia Article Referring to Communist Russia. (which has collapsed)

Wikipedia obviously tends to lean towards the de jure side, taking the side of what the Government calls a country. Be consistent. OtherAJ (talk) 16:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Neither "America" nor "Russia" is accurate for those entities. Wikipedia does not repeat common inaccuracies - similarly my country is at United Kingdom not "England". Both "United States" and "Soviet Union" (neither of which is/was the English language long form) are the most common accurate names for those countries.

As pointed out above, the problem with China is that there are two entities claiming to be China hence the need to differentiate. It's misleading to pretend that Myanmar/Burma is in the same category. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:43, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

So then how is "Myanmar" less accurate than "Burma", anyway? mike4ty4 (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I am agnostic on the situation. I have no opinion, I was just posting so that we may get to a conclusion more quickly. --OtherAJ (talk) 03:19, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

China and Russia are hardly models for what to name countries. PRC is the "Official name" of China, we just call it China as it's shorter. Same with Russia, the official name is the Russian Federation. Likewise with Australia, the official name of Australia is the Commonwealth of Australia. But who calls it that except in formal occassions? If we go by this convention, we have Burma as Myanmar.

Remember, a nation is little more than an idea and the people (whether a lot or a self-appointed few) call it that because they wish to have some form of identifyer against other countries and/or past events. A good example of this is the US, who went to extraordinary lengths to differntiate themselves from Britain in the 1790's. There are no lines on the world.Katana Geldar 00:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Straw poll

There seems to be a greater number of comments on this page by wikipedians favouring Myanmar to Burma. I want to conduct a straw poll to check who are in favour of the respective names. Please state the reason alongside your !vote. Keep it brief to a single line. This does not imply that a renaming might be carried out or not. Its just to track who is in favour of what and the reasoning behind it. We can use the other sections for debate. =Nichalp «Talk»= 19:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

• Just a comment... those who favor the name Myanmar are more likely to be frequenting this talk page than those who favor the name Burma. For many Burma-namers, the article name is already as it should be. -BaronGrackle (talk) 19:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

  Valid point. Granted. But the idea is to list the reasons for pro/opposition to the name change. =Nichalp «Talk»= 20:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

  I've listed it on the Community bulletin board =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:50, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

• A fair comment, BaronGrackle. By the way I wasn't trying to suggest in a previous comment that you were personally involved in torture, rape and oppression (are you?) but the "Myanmar" Government certainly is and I have no wish to legitimise them in any way.Angstriddenyouth (talk) 19:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

  Let's leave the discussion to another section please. =Nichalp «Talk»= 20:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

You will always get more comment against the status quo than supporting it. István (talk) 18:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Burma option

1. Burma. It is still the name used by Burmese people, and the unelected Military leadership had no authority to change it.Angstriddenyouth (talk) 19:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
2. Burma, for all the reason I have previously stated. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 01:11, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

   Could you please briefly summarise your reason for the change? =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

3. Burma is the name i know and the name everyone i know knows. When i saw "myanmar" in the news, i thought, "where is that?". after looking it up, i realised it was Burma. Ahh i says. Anyways, the country is Burma and the people are Burmese. Masterhatch (talk) 05:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
4. For what it's worth, most people I know have never heard of the word 'Myanmar' (mostly people from the UK, though my girlfriend went to a school with people from all over Europe and she has never heard of Myanmar either (compelling evidence, eh?!)). 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
5. Burma is the commonly used and English name of the country. Most Burmese I know (excepting a few from other ethnic groups who call it Burma in any language) refer to their country as Burma in English and Myanma in, um, Myanma. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 16:35, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
6. Burma. Until it's specifically demonstrated that "Myanmar" is "the most common English name" among native English speakers, there's no WP-relevant justification for changing it.Elmo iscariot (talk) 19:38, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

   Wikipedia's naming policy is based on common usage, not common usage specifically among native English speakers.--Huaiwei (talk) 20:13, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

   I don't think that it has been demonstrated anywhere that Myanmar is the common usage amongst non-native English speakers either. Official does not make it common.--Regents Park (Feed my swans) 17:38, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

   The naming of articles on the English Wikipedia is based on common usage among English speakers - so the page for the capital of Austria is at Vienna rather than Wien, capital of Österreich. Having said that I believe that in the case of Burms / Myanmar the balance has now shifted to favour Myanmar over Burma.Filceolaire (talk) 13:29, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

   Let us not also forget that the page was once at Myanmar as well, so this isn't just about having enough "evidence" to change it from Burma, its what fits better. Jared (t)  17:07, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

   And an "English speaker" refers to any English speaker, native or non-native inclusive. Well practically all "English speakers" regardless of geography or political affiliation refer to "Wien" as "Vienna" in English, they refer to "Myanmar" as Myanmar" or "Burma" in English. This is the distinct difference here.--Huaiwei (talk) 17:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

7. I think this is still the most widely used name. --Howard the Duck 13:37, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
8. Being a dictatorship doesn't mean you can change reality if it pleases you, and wikipedia shouldn't play along. As above, there is no assertion that Myanmar is universally used by english or non-english speaking people. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 18:41, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
9. To what I said before I should add this in regard of certain doubts. Of course, we can stick to the name of Burma, we can even call the town Rangoon, following the old naming conventions. After all, who in the USA or UK - just an example - cares whether the name comes from Rakhinese (Arakanese) or Burmese. What matters is that it can be pronounced and related to certain country. In the past British have "absorbed" and transcribed many foreign languages and names, adopting and incorporating everything from Latin and Greek till nowadays Burmese and Rakhinese (Arakanese) - like a huge sponge. The name Burma is no excpetion to this rule.Sovann Maccha (talk) 00:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
10. "Burma" and "Myanmar" are still both commonly used in the English language. No need, at least not yet, to change the title of the article. Kaldari (talk) 00:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

    I guess I just don't understand why you'd want to keep it at Burma if you believe they are "both commonly used in the English language". If you look above or below in the sections, there are links showing that Wikipedia prefers the official, self-given name if no name is proven as more common. That official name is Myanmar. -BaronGrackle (talk) 02:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

11. Burma is the name of the country. Myanmar is the name forced upon Burma by a military junta. The choice is clear. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 06:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
12. Burma. I can't speak for other English-speaking countries, but as far as the UK is concerned, the more common name is undoubtedly Burma. Andrew Yong (talk) 14:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
13. Burma; read Andrew Yong's comment. Ironholds (talk) 14:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
14. Burma is clearly the name that should be used, but it's not like this poll has any meaning one way or the other. Roxi2 (talk) 20:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

    Yes this poll has a meaning. It summarizes the viewpoints of all. It's not an RFA where consensus has to be determined, rather understanding each sides viewpoints. Notice it's not a voting exercise, else we would be hit by ballot stuffing, and IPs would not be able to !vote. Do give an objective reasoning. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:23, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

15. Burma is the common name in English, so the article should stay there for that reason alone. I have never heard "Myanmar" used except in very formal contexts, or by the military government on Burma itself. Even if Myanmar is the official name, it does not seem to be used widely enough to justify moving the article. In the same way, we have Los Angeles, not El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula.

    Now, with that said, I would support an article on Myanmar or Union of Myanmar that deals purely with the governmental aspects of the current régime, with Burma being a separate article concentrating on the geography and people of the reason, similar to the article on China. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 05:31, 17 May 2008 (UTC).

    I agree, I think the best compromise we can make is to split the articles into Union of Myanmar (which will be about the current government) and Burma (which will be about the geography), as we have done with the People's Republic of China and the China article.MethMan47 (talk) 16:15, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

16. Burma. On en-wp we use the most commonly used name in English speaking countries. Let us not be confused by the machinations of an illegitimate government. --Dragon695 (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
17. Burma is most used among English-speakers around the world. This is the primary criteria set in WP:NAME. To some Well-intentioned Wikipedians, Myanmar usage may seem comparable, but there are two important considerations, i.e. factors which bias the comparison: 1. the AP has adopted Myanmar over Burma and this name is used rigidly across the North American press (whereas the UK press uses "Burma" but operates differently; it does not generate near the mass of bylines and hits); and 2. It is a (perhaps not too gutsy) assumption that the average age of Wikipedians is less than of the general English-speaking population; as "Myanmar" appeared in broad US usage only in 1989, those born later than the mid-80s would naturally give less weight to Burma than it deserved. But the Wikipedia guideline on names is very clear: it requires what is most common among the entire English-speaking population, not EnWiki users. István (talk) 19:10, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
18. It should be Burma because %99.7 of the world's population calls Burma "Burma", %0.1 doesn't even know that Burma is a country and they say "whats that?", and %0.2 of the world's population call it Myanmar. Also in the new video game, Making History - The Calm & The Storm there is a country named Burma, and I never even heard of this Myanmar shit before I read that they tried to change thier name or something like that. Also, Myanmar is the name of an illegal regime led by a fascist and so it might bring up bad memories for the families of the over 300 high school and college students that get shot each year protesting the Nazis for a democracy.--xgmx (T (UTC)

    Also, Myanmarese.....that just sounds stupid, I mean I would be insulted if someone called me that.--xgmx (T (UTC)

    The preceding comments were added by an indefinitely blocked user. BigBlueFish (talk) 21:36, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

19. Burma - per common name policy. Must we bring this up again every single month? --T-rex 01:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
20. Burma. What people call themselves and what we call them are not one and the same (or visa versa). I say Finland, they say Suomi. I say England, the French say Angleterre, the Vietnamese say Anh. If the murderers in Naypyidaw want to push for this nonsence let them, but I see no reason to aid them. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:45, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
21. Burma. This is the traditional and commonplace name in the English language which is the basis of this version of the encyclopaedia. This name is better than the alternative per WP:NAME and WP:NEO. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
22. Burma. The SLORC holds no power to redefine the English language, regardless of if they are de facto rules of the country or not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Geira (talk • contribs) 14:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
23. Burma. It is the most common name used in English, it is still the name used by Burmese people, and the unelected Military leadership had no authority to change it. JohnMGarrison (talk) 03:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

    No authority? What one art are you talking about? They have authority over the country whether you like it or not. Thanks, SqueakBox 03:57, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

    I am talking about the fact that the unelected military hunta has no authority to change the name against the will of the people. Whether you like it or not the people of that country do not support that new name. JohnMGarrison (talk) 22:40, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

    Whether you like it or not, you can't cite a single convincing source to support your notion that "the people of that country do not support that new name".--Huaiwei (talk) 15:03, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

24. Burma. Quite obviously, both names hold significant meaning behind them. The name Burma refers to the people, history and customs held within the country, whereas the name Myanmar is the official name used globally, created by the current military force leading the country. I believe that the name Burma should be seen as the countries official name due to the links it has with the development and growth of the country, as well as the meaning it holds for the people of the country, as opposed to the military controlling the country. Magically Clever (talk) 10:37, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
25. The SLORC is a millitary regime, Wikipedia must be a beacon for freedom and democracy therefore we must not name it Myanmar but the true name of Burma. Down with tolitarian police states, democracy for ever. :)Wannabe Wiki (talk) 07:48, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

    Actually, Wikipedia is not a democracy and is supposed to write from a neutral point of view and this includes political ideologies. Consider this. BigBlueFish (talk) 21:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

26. Burma Simply the more recognisable and used name in English, nothing to do with politics. Deworrall (talk) 15:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Myanmar option

1. Myanmar is both commonly used and the official name. -BaronGrackle (talk) 19:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
2. Let's see if reason prevails this time round. --   Avg    19:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

   Could you please list your reasoning? =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

   Per Wikipedia:NCON#Dealing_with_self-identifying_terms. Wikipedia describes, doesn't prescribe.--   Avg    18:17, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

3. Myanmar is what they call themselves, Myanmar is what UN calls it, Myanmar is what a significant (perhaps majority) part of the media calls it. On wikipedia, we report facts and dont bother about inadvertantly "legitimizing" regimes by our actions. Sarvagnya 20:54, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
4. If this article is to be neutral, it cannot have the position that unelected governments are not "legitamate" especially since every country around the world recognizes a plethora of unelected governments. Myanmar is used by the government of the country which is in turn recognized by the majority of people in the country. The government of the country has asked that people call it Myanmar for whatever reason, and today, most international institutions recognize it's English common name as Myanmar. Myanmar is used by the country's people and also by many major English news organizations. Out of the two names, Myanmar and Burma, it is the one that is the most neutral and accurate. "Burma" has never been the official name of the country in its own language. Instead, its a leftover from the colonial era that has now been rejected by a significant amount of people.JohnWycliff (talk) 12 May 2008 (UTC)
5. Myanmar seems more prevalent in the media internationally. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
6. Used by several international agencies, including UN, IOC, etc. Also used, at least in official correspondence, by most governments. Kaiser matias (talk) 23:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
7. For many reasons, but for one this article was named Myanmar for the longest time until the monks incident, then without consensus it was changed to Burma. Also lately I havent heard any news source call it Burma during the cyclone incident, it was always referred to as Myanmar MethMan47 (talk) 00:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
8. Simply a matter of Wikipedia naming conventions: If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local official name. In this case, that is Union of Myanmar, although I would prefer simply Myanmar for its wider usage. I would also accept Myanmar (Burma).Rundquist (talk) 04:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
9. I support Myanmar because the October 2007 RM (which happened right in the middle of the Monks' protests) is invalid because there was no consensus to move. Both Myanmar and Burma are used by English speakers in general (Myanmar seems to be dominate in the U.S. while Burma is popular in U.K.), so I think in a case that is not clear cut as to which name English speakers prefer, we should go with the official name, Myanmar, which is recognized by the U.N. and all but a handful of nations. --Tocino 05;55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
10. I have previously supported the article name at "Myanmar" in previous straw polls, and if anything, I believe there is more compelling evidence now (May 2008) than before. The Associaed Press, CNN, even Google are consistenly using "Myanmar" instead of "Burma" to report cyclone news, to a higher degree than I remember from the last time the nation was in the news a few months ago. Apparently the BBC is the only major holdout, but that should not be a reason to keep the historic name. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:19, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
11. I have similarly always taken the view that especially where common usage cannot be used to decisively single out the best name for a country, the official name should prevail as per the naming conventions. Constant reference to "what the English world calls it" is highly contentious, because statistics continous show that there are far more numerous English speakers outside the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada combined, and by several times over to boot. All Southeast Asian nations where Myanmar is geographically located in refers to it as Myanmar officially in English. Both China and India, with a bigger English-speaking population than all of the USA, uses Mynamar. Even as Burmese proponents say there are *some* sources within those places who use Burma (such as some Thai human rights groups), there are also *some* sources in the "anglophone" world who uses Myanmar too. It is clear the the "common usage" and "English-speaking world" arguments cannot stand in all past discussions, and will likely remain so.--Huaiwei (talk) 17:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

    While the government of India calls it Myanmar, almost no one on the street does. Don't know about China. While the official usage argument may or may not stand, common usage being Burma certainly does, at least wrt India.--Regents Park (Feed my swans) 16:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

    So are you able to provide compelling evidence on what the laymen uses in each country to be examined, India included, before concluding that "common usage being Burma certainly does"? It is clear from the extensive disucssions here that the contrary is actually true.--Huaiwei (talk) 17:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

    I see no discussion here about what the layman in India or China calls the country. Perhaps you have compelling evidence that the lay person in India or China or the United States refers to the country as Myanmar? --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 17:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

12. We can't make a political statement here. As much as I'd like to call the page Burma, there is no doubt in my mind that it should be Myanmar. We shouldn't name it what it should rightfully be called. Jared (t)  17:04, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
13. I don't see it as realistic Myanmar reverting to its precolonial name of Burma. First, because the majority of Bamars has always referred to their country as Myanmar, and to others as Myanmarese. Second, because of the Bamars who have the overwhelming majority part in ruling junta. Personally, I really coudn´t care less about how other countries call Myanmar, far more important is what the very citizens of Myanmar consider to be the appropriate name or usually call their country - be it Burma or Myanmar. Besides all afore mentioned we have the actual situation where UN and UNHCR use the name of Myanmar, and not Burma when they officially refer to Myanmar. On the other hand American, Australian and UK policies refuse to acknowledge this reality, sticking to their own "misconcepted preconceptions" and naming traditions. All in all, I´m for Myanmar. Sovann Maccha (talk) 23:45, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
14. Myanmar is what the country is officially called. Also, the article Yangon is not named Rangoon, which I think is backwards, because Yangon is an even less common name for the city of Yangon/Rangoon than Myanmar for Myanmar/Burma. Fix the inconsistency. Someone the Person (talk) 01:05, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
15. The official English name of the country is Myanmar (or more correctly, the Union of Myanmar). It has comparable usage to Burma within English media. The UN refers to it as Myanmar. ~Cr∞nium 08:57, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
16. This is the official name of the country. I don't see a reason why the article should be renamed into the colonial name of the country. --millosh (talk (meta:)) 16:34, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
17. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an editorial. This is the official name. We wouldn't make the Philadelphia article redirect to Philly simply because that's what the inhabitants call it. At best, Burma should redirect to "Myanmar". Hierophantasmagoria (talk) 20:41, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
18. Re our WP:NPOV policy. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:21, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
19. I arrived here as an uninvolved party via the Community Portal, and it seems to me that people, especially Avg (talk · contribs), have made an unequivocal case for Myanmar based on Wikipedia policy and guidelines. I also see a lot of political arguments for Burma, which are void. I am particularly disgusted by the notion that the choice of Western governments to use Burma should affect this decision. It's NPOV not WPOV. If any government should have weight in the choice of the country's name it should be its own. We should bear in mind of course that the history of this country is far from over and we may need to reverse this decision. BigBlueFish (talk) 20:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
20. For the same reason Beijing is not Pekin here (many here may be too young to remember, but yes, China changed the name of Pekin in English long time ago). And Mumbai is not Bombay. And Chennai is not Madras. And Sri Lanka is not Ceylon .... and so many more. Why would Myanmar be different? Anagnorisis 23:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
    • By your own account, you are not a native English speaker and it shows since the long-standing name of that city in English is Peking, which is still commonly used. You are perhaps thinking of French or some other language. Can we please exclude the opinions of editors who are not competent to judge English usage. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:06, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
      • I'm sorry but I am a native English speaker and if you have heard anyone say that the Olympics this year will be held in Pekin then I'd like to know where. All users have the right to voice their opinions, but all opinions will be overruled by matters of verifiable fact and convention where it exists. BigBlueFish (talk) 16:25, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

    Your comment borders on trolling, Colonel Warden. Would you care to refactor? This debate is open to anyone not merely to those who identify as native English speakers, and your comment re "is he confusing it with French?" is deeply insulting. Thanks, SqueakBox 17:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

21. Well, I'm a native English speaker and I agree completely with Anagnorisis and the UN. Self-identification is key - if the government of the country wants the counrty to be called Myanmar then that is what we should call it. To use any other name is to take a political stance. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:07, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
22. It's the name of the country. GoodDay (talk) 17:24, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
23. Myanmar is what it should be based Wikipedia policy and not political discussions. While the government is repugnant, that is not relevant to what we call the article. Jpgs (talk) 13:25, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
24. Myanmar is the correct name according to the UNO, and gives 80M hits on google -Burma gives 31M- Iunaw 23:32, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

1. The "truth by consensus" view isn't going to help anybody. Perhaps the best way to decide this issue is the have a disambiguation page stating: Myanmar/Burma - two names for the one place. If the currently unstable government there wants to call itself Myanmar then let it. If at some point in the future it changes back so should the reference. If the want to call themselves the "Annotated Conditions of Zee" are you going to stick to an anachronism? For my opinion we should strive to call places by the local name if there isn't an established name in English (such as Vienna) so I vote Myanmar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sippawitz (talk • contribs) 00:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

• Whilst Myanmar seems to be the globally more comman usage, I think we all need to acknowledge that the prevalence of media usage does change significantly between countries and not keep playing the "nearly all media outlets where I am call it this" card. However overall globally it seems that Myanmar is the more common name for this country. I agree that all the arguments about the nature of the regime, colonialism, the policies of the UN and whether or not governments can change the English language (since it's not a yes/no question - it's whether or not government usage catches on) should all be irrelevant to this discussion. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:59, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
• A popular comment seems to be that the un-elected military government has no authority, or no right to change "Burma" into "Myanmar". But still, the official name recognized and used by every major Asian countries, and many other countries in the west (regardless of what the western media likes to call it), is "Myanmar". By accepting the name change, these countries recognize the authority of the unelected military government in Myanmar.Atticuslai (talk) 02:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
• This straw poll has left out an important option: splitting the article. I'll go ahead and add it in. FYI: 9 votes for Myanmar and 3 for Burma were present before this option. The Jade Knight (talk) 07:34, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
• It is very hard to judge what the majority everyday (non-media, non-governmental) usage is. All we can do is say 'well this is how it seems to me'. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
• In regards to the proposal for separate articles, would the Myanmar article begin with the military regime (1962) or with the martial law and official name change (1989)? I'd go with the 1962 cutoff, myself. If you're discouraged that this idea isn't getting much support, keep in mind that it was attempted earlier and had virtually no supporters. I'd also imagine that, for it to gain substantial support, it would need to be voted on separately and not as a third option in the existing survey. Don't know whether policy would encourage that, though. -BaronGrackle (talk) 16:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
• Too much is made of the "most common English name" meme. There simply is no sure way to incontrovertibly determine which usage is "more popular". Ghits is often cited as one of the ways to go about it.. but it is flawed from the get go for several reasons. Foremost being that ghits only reflects online usage and also that ghits is hugely influenced by the usage on Wikipedia (and consequently its hundreds of mirrors mirroring every article and talk page and more) itself. So when there are multiple English names and we are in doubt, the "official" one surely has the upper hand. Sarvagnya 03:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
• The problem is that it not everyone has a 'doubt'. I, for example, are convinced about the mathematical certitude of my argument that more people are aware of Burma than are aware of Myanmar. I will reiterate that argument here: Every English speaking person who has heard of Myanmar knows that the country was formerly known as Burma. There exists at least one person in this world (I've come across many) who have never heard of Myanmar but are aware of a country known as Burma (can't find it on a map, imagine that it is the size of a peanut, but do know that it is out there somewhere). Therefore the number of people who are aware of a country known as Burma is greater than the number of people who are aware of a country known as Myanmar. (I have never met an English speaking person who knows the country only as Myanmar - not in India, not in the United States, and definitely not in Burma.) --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 15:04, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

And again, as with Gdansk and Mumbai, those people must not watch television or read newspapers... even the BBC mentions Myanmar in passing. Or (and this is why I had only heard of Danzig instead of Gdansk), they play too many WWII video games. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:13, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

You miss the point of my argument which has nothing to do with the availability of the term Myanmar in the news. Of course people who read the newspaper (shockingly few these days) and watch the news on TV have heard of Myanmar. But these same people also know that the country is also called Burma. It is the people who either don't read the newspaper (or their eyes glaze over at the words 'cyclone' or 'protests') or watch anything but local news on TV (shockingly too many these days) who form the population from which the Burma knowers but not Myanmar knowers are drawn. (Some parents at my daughter's school are in this set.) --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 15:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but those people you describe who glaze over the words 'cyclone" or 'protests' will see Myanmar in the majority of headlines; maybe not in the U.K., but throughout the world. That's where the media usage factors in. These are our people who know Myanmar but now Burma. Even local news stations briefly mention international events, in my experience. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

They never even get as far as Myanmar. "Cyclone in Burma!" says the BBC. Then, half way into the news "Oh, it's also called Myanmar these days." By then, the glazed eyed ones have clicked away from the BBC or have already turned to the doings (or is it undoings) of Lindsay and Brittney. BTW, have you run across people who know of Myanmar but have never heard of Burma? Be honest!

Honestly? It just doesn't come up. I know the Massachusetts state school standards make their students learn about "Myanmar" among the countries of southeast Asia. I know that at my church service we recently prayed for "the people in Myanmar, Burma" (whatever that means). But it's usually not in conversation. Many people probably recognize neither. But with your point about people never getting "as far as Myanmar"... with the majority of world news headlines, "Myanmar" is the name that appears first. In the U.K., those people wouldn't get as far as Myanmar. In the majority of news media, those people wouldn't get as far as Burma. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

If that list further up this page has any truth to it, then there are plenty of media outlets that refer to the country as Burma. My own local paper (The New York Times) always calls it Myanmar but every article that I can remember mentions Burma as well. On the other hand, newspapers that call it Burma may not mention Myanmar at all (admittedly for political reasons). For example, The Hindu, an Indian paper, rarely even mentions Myanmar as an alternative name. If one read only the Hindu, one could easily be forgiven for being unaware of the existence of Myanmar. If one read the New York Times, one would be aware of the existence of Myanmar, the existence of Burma, and, to some extent, the controversies behind the names. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 16:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sub-Issues

If we're ever going to make a decision, we need to know what criteria we are using. Let's vote on what should, and what should not, be taken into account when deciding this. These are some of the separate factors as I have identified them, if anyone can think of any others, please put them here. After each, please say support if you think they should affect what we decide to name the article, and oppose if you don't. Please don't base your opinion on this on whether you think it will ultimately lead to your personal favourite getting used. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Media usage

support - as a gauge of general use, but be wary of bias. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

2. What the Junta wants

oppose 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

3. What English-Speaking governments want

oppose 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

4. What the UN calls it

oppose 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

5. Whether the history or current events of a country are more important in deciding what Wikipedia should call it.

support 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

6. Miscellaneous others who have had to make the choice, such as CIA world factbook, ISO 3166, Encyclopaedia Britannica (perhaps this section is a bit broad)

support - if we are able to know they chose to do it how they did it. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 12:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this idea is a non-starter. The whole discussion is implicitly about which criteria to use; if we all agreed on the criteria, the name would be determined automatically. Pol098 (talk) 13:57, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has already set a guideline, however people choose not to follow it. Please see WP:NCON.--   Avg    18:10, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually it seems we're deciding how that guideline applies to our article. Also, perhaps I should refer you to this part of the guideline: "In those unsolved cases a poll, for example via Wikipedia:Requested moves, can be conducted." 87.194.217.99 (talk) 19:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

That's not true, half of the discussion is about what is the most commonly used name by English speakers, there was some discussion of what the media called it, and most criteria have only been commented on by a few people so we have no idea of how much support each idea has. What's more the same things are getting suggested multiple times so we need to make it a little clearer what the issues are and what has and has not been dealt with. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 19:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Aren't we trying to describe it? Shouldn't that be what we want to do? If we had a disambiguation page that would help. Sippawitz (talk) 00:53, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Burma/Myanmar"

Regardless of all issues of politics, "official" name, diplomatically recognised name, etc., the country is widely known by both names in the English-speaking world. Which name is MOST used doesn't seem relevant, as neither usage is uncommon. Most countries are known by a single name, not necessarily the official name (Japan=Nippon). In many cases the world has agreed to drop a name, and use another exclusively (always Zimbabwe never Rhodesia, Sri Lanka not Ceylon, etc.) As this country is widely known by 2 names, then perhaps the article's title should be "Burma/Myanmar". It could be mentioned briefly in the article that the alternative names are simply in alphabetical order (to forestall this discussion restarting re "Myanmar/Burma"). Redirects from "Burma" and "Myanmar", of course. Pol098 (talk) 13:53, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

• Rundquist, I, and others have pointed out from Wikipedia naming conventions: If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local official name. If you believe that Myanmar is at least as commonly used as Burma, the guidelines point toward using it as the name. As for the slash, I think the main problem is Wikipedia style. No other articles (that I know of) use a compromised name divided by slashes. I would personally be okay with "Burma/Myanmar", the chronological listing, but Wikipedia wouldn't. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Call me stupid but I didn't see where you said that before. Well I retract everything I've been saying and support it being called Myanmar. Why is there a problem at all? 87.194.217.99 (talk) 19:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem, of course, is that if you stood on the streets of New York and asked 'Burma or Myanmar?' you'll get an overwhelming Burma response. (Even the two New York Burmese restaurants, which with good business common sense don't bother advertising themselves as Myanmar cuisine, use Burma exclusively). The 'no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English' is not really true. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 19:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Burmese cuisine is no more telling than Peking duck, Siamese cats, or Persian language. I can't go to the streets of New York to ask that question, but I can look through the majority of English news media (stop me now if we decide Google News is unreliable; Myanmar takes the majority anytime you search), atlases, encyclopedias, Google, or Yahoo. I'd say that this at least places a question on Burma's common use, to the extent that the different Wikipedia policies would take effect (all of which point toward the official or self-given name). -BaronGrackle (talk) 20:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Burmese cuisine is hardly analogous to Peking duck. Peking duck is a well known dish with an established name and cannot be compared with a relatively unknown ethnic cuisine trying to muscle its way into New York's ethnic restaurant mix. The way to do that is, of course, to use the name that people will recognize. Thus 'Spanish Restaurant' not 'Restaurant of Espana' or 'Burmese cuisine' not 'Myanmar cuisine'. Color it anyway you like but Burma is easily a more recognizable name than Myanmar whatever google pages may say. (Though, I must admit that one consequence of the fall protests and the recent cyclone is probably an increasing awareness of Myanmar.) Still, I think this is a particularly fruitless discussion because hard statistics are hard to come by. So, que sera sera, c'est la vie and all that. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 20:52, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Because "Myanmar cuisine" is not grammaticall correct. Duh. Note that we still say "Burmese language", in the same way we say Dutch for many things related to the Netherlands. Are you going to call that country Dutchland then?--Huaiwei (talk) 20:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I have always called it Holland, personally --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 21:26, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

So have I; though I realize that Holland is not correct and that it is really only a region of the Netherlands.72.92.4.157 (talk) 13:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. So if so many people use the term "Holland", can you explain why it is not used in place of "The Netherlands" as the article title?--Huaiwei (talk) 17:20, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Well another example is that here in London there are a lot of restaurants serving the cuisine of Iran. And they still use "Persian cuisine" and "Persian restaurant" to describe themselves despite "Iran" being the almost universal name used for the country in question. Sometimes these adjectives survive despite the name they derive from being superseded. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:52, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Most of the people in New York have not heard of either Burma or Myanmar.talk) 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] some food for thought

some food for thought: the official name of South Korea is Republic of Korea, yet the most common name and the name used on wikipedia is South Korea. The official name is not always the best title for an article and the most common name is not always the best either (take Ivory Coast for example). Masterhatch (talk) 18:08, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Or, as someone else pointed out, we call a Spain a Spain. Not an Espana! --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 19:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

So then there are cases obviously where neither name is "best", so you have to pick one anyway even if it's not best and settle for a less-than-best solution. Consistency is what I prefer, a consistent set of naming rules. mike4ty4 (talk) 19:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

No, you don't have to stick with one. You can separate the two into their two different meanings (one cultural/historical, and one for the current government). The Jade Knight (talk) 21:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Countries with different names in English and their native language

I note a lot of people raise examples like "we don't call Germany Deutschland" or Japan/Nippon, Spain/Espana etc... However it's important to recognise two key points where these examples aren't really relevant:

• For most of these countries there has never been any effort to get the native language name used in English and indeed the countries' governments do not use those names in English - "Germany" appears in English language versions of, variously, official treaties, visa forms, embassy signs, the output of the country's tourist board, statements by German ministers and so forth; ditto "Japan" and "Spain".
• There are other countries where the English language name is the same as the native language - e.g. France.

Timrollpickering (talk) 22:01, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

But (virtually) no one in the English-speaking world is calling Mount Everest "Mount Qomolangma" these days, despite the fact that that is now the official (according to China) English name for the mountain—Chinese English media now use the term extensively. The Jade Knight (talk) 21:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Very true. Compare the use of "Mount Qomolangma" to "Myanmar" in English use, though. Myanmar has become at least one of the commonly used terms. -BaronGrackle (talk) 21:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about that. I'm sure that English speaking Chinese use Mount Qomolangma and there are plenty of those around. Now, if only we can figure out what the Indian government officially calls it ..... (I wonder if Huaiwei will accuse me of selectively highlighting viewpoints of others when I am selectively highlighting viewpoints of others?) --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 21:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

In regards Everest/Qomolangma, a situation I'm not at all familiar with, it sounds like this is a renaming attempt that has not yet taken off. (It's complicated further as the mountain is on a border so a single country will find it much harder to successfully promote any name change internationally.) And again this is not the same as Myanmar/Burma - here the usage has taken off in part and "Myanmar" is used a lot in English around the world. I've even seen it used in the British media, albeit through imported material (for example the other night Sky News ran a feed about the cyclone aftermath from a US news channel which used Myanmar).

As I wrote above, most names for countries were not left under some gooseberry bush by persons unknown. They have usually originated with their authorities and those that don't are very often taken up by the authorities anyway. And people around the world usually follow suit. How long that effect lasts can vary widely for all manner of reasons and is quite varied in different countries - for example the UK has historically had ties to Burma and so the older name is quite familiar, whereas the US has had fewer and so the older term has less reason to linger. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] news database search results

Hi, just to inject a little data into this discussion, I did a search of the Factiva database, which allows full-text searches of many thousands of journalistic publications in English from many countries over many years (as opposed to Google, which is probably biased towards very recent online sources).

• In the last year, "Myanmar" gets 42687 hits, while "Burma" gets 33142 hits.
• For the last 10 years, from 1/1/1998 to 1/1/2008, "Myanmar" gets 214205 hits while "Burma" gets 151504 hits.
• For the 10 years before that, from 1/1/1988 to 1/1/1998, "Myanmar" gets 30054 hits, and "Burma" gets 69899 hits.
• For the 10 years before that, from 1/1/1978 to 1/1/1988, "Burma" gets 4430 hits and "Myanmar" gets zero hits (not too surprising since the name was changed in 1989).

Various claims (above) that one term or the other is vastly more prevalent in English do not seem to hold up to scrutiny. "Myanmar" seems to have a slight edge in popularity in recent years, but the margin is small enough that popularity alone doesn't seem to be a good way to decide the name of this article.

—Steven G. Johnson (talk) 06:25, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I repeat, if we believe that neither term is "vastly more prevalent in English", then Wikipedia standards point us toward Myanmar. Two of them do:

• Wikipedia: Naming conventions states: "If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local official name." The local official name is Myanmar.
• Wikipedia:Naming conflict states: "Where self-identifying names are in use, they should be used within articles. Wikipedia does not take any position on whether a self-identifying entity has any right to use a name; this encyclopedia merely notes the fact that they do use that name... Bear in mind that Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. We cannot declare what a name should be, only what it is." Note that, while many Burmese people may self-identify their nation as Burma, the entity that this article is over self-identifies as Myanmar. The rules do give an exception example: "Japanese" is used instead of "Nihon-jin". Our discussion here has already established that Myanmar is the official English word for Myanma, not just a foreign word, and it appears in many more English resources than Nihon or Deutschland.

Many have said that Myanmar must proof demonstrably that it is used more than Burma. I believe it has been proven to be used at least as much: the media (again, search the two on Google News), all the encyclopedias (including Britannica), Yahoo, this Factiva database that just got mentioned, and so on and so forth, any criteria for "common use" you use other than Google Books, Google Scholar, memories you had growing up, or the guy you apparently know who says "Burma". Myanmar has covered its burden of proof. The burden of proof now lies on "Burma" to show it is used overwhelmingly more than "Myanmar"; if not, we have two different Wikipedia policies that strike it down. As sections like this show; Burma cannot be proven to be the overwhelming majority use. Myanmar is the default answer. -BaronGrackle (talk) 13:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Since BaronGrackle brings up the naming conventions, let's take a look and see what we get. The first principle of the naming conventions is The purpose of an article's title is to enable that article to be found by interested readers, and nothing more. A simple statement. Now, let's look at the English speaking world and see what we have. It seems fair to assume that almost everyone who knows what Myanmar is, knows what Burma is. It also makes sense that there are many people out there who know Burma but do not know Myanmar. Therefore, it follows that more people in the English speaking world know what a Burma is than know what a Myanmar is. Therefore, the article should be named Burma. Unless you argue that there are enough people in the English speaking world out there who know the existence of Myanmar but not of Burma, I don't see how you can say that 'more' people know of Myanmar than of Burma. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 14:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Media hits does not a widely accepted make, especially in this case. The Naming conventions deal with acceptance in English. Simple common sense tells me that almost every English speaking person who knows the name 'Myanmar', will also know the name 'Burma' while there will be many English speaking people who know the name Burma but will not know the name Myanmar. Given that, no one can possibly argue with a straight face that more English speakers recognize the name Myanmar over the name Burma. According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions, The purpose of an article's title is to enable that article to be found by interested readers, and nothing more. Since more English speakers recognize Burma, the article should be named Burma.--Regents Park (Feed my swans) 14:22, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd maintain that the number of people who recognize Burma but don't recognize Myanmar is negligible, comparable to the number who would recognize Danzig but not recognize Gdansk, which is itself cited as an example on our guidelines page, despite the fact that I bet anyone in New York (or here in Texas) would identify Danzig first, and despite the fact that I do not even know how to type an accent mark over the "n". I can say that much with a straight face. Media hits may not a widely accepted make, but they do mean that anyone who glances at the news will come into contact with Myanmar. Even the BBC notes that the country calls itself Myanmar, so anyone who reads that source will recognize the name. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Did I actually reply twice to the same point? Senility has arrived for sure. (Or, perhaps, one for Myanmar and one for Burma!)

[edit] Support?

There doesn't seem to be many people here wanting this to be called Burma compared to those who want to call it Myanmar. I know wikipedia isn't a democracy but come on you have to draw the line somewhere! Surely we have enough consensus to change the name back to Myanmar? Deamon138 (talk) 23:21, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree, I think we have enough consensus to change it back to Myanmar, plus people can then stop bitching about the dispute tag. Let's just get this over with, for once and for all. MethMan47 (talk) 23:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you kidding?? You have a weird definition of consensus. Kaldari (talk) 00:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Then what would be your definition of consensus? 50 more people? 120? The majority of people that posted in the straw poll believes the name should be reverted back to Myanmar, and I do not see that changing anytime soon. What more do we truly need to decide?MethMan47 (talk) 00:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

After Just reading the disccusion i feel that while Myanamar has more users on there hand, Burma people make a more convincing argument for it to be burma. RoyalOrleans 02:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I very much doubt we have consensus now. The last vote was tied exactly between Myanmar and Burma, therefore "no consensus", therefore no change. I was informed that even if Myanmar had won the vote, the disagreements meant there was still no consensus, so there still would have been no change. The article changed from Myanmar to Burma because the vote was overwhelming and, despite lack of consensus, it slipped through. And now, Wikipedia stands as a Rock of Chickamauga, with an article titled differently than EVERY OTHER SINGLE encyclopedia online.

BonesBrigade, you really believe the Burma-name has a more convincing argument? Which part of the argument convinces you? The argument is, from what I can tell: "People call it Burma more." What about all of the uses of Myanmar in news media and Google and Yahoo and encyclopedias and atlases and classrooms? They don't convince you that that name is used at least just as much, if not more? Point us to where Burma is used more. Google Books, and Google Scholar. Namely, academics and historians; not modern times. I guess I'm just a little disheartened. :-) -BaronGrackle (talk) 02:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you talking U.S. or the rest of the world? Just check UK atlases and mapmakers and you'll see Burma... this is a world encyclopedia. I don't doubt it's the same down under. Let the knuckleheads running Burma call it what they want inside the borders but to the world it's Burma. 72.134.41.242 (talk) 07:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Along those lines, are YOU talking U.K. or the rest of the world? U.K. atlases and mapmakers I cannot speak for, but I've been a broken record in mentioning that Britannica uses Myanmar. Plus, what of countries like India? And what of the other sources? The news media, google, and yahoo majorities? -BaronGrackle (talk) 14:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

If we went by what Britannica says, might as well just throw in the trowel on Wikipedia. Isn't that the whole point of what we all are doing out here? Google (maps), interestingly, used to use all the good old names till late last year. Then they switched to Myanmar from Burma but, just to be different, still use Rangoon. Does that mean we should switch Burma to Myanmar and Yangon to Rangoon?--Regents Park (Feed my swans) 02:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That is a very simple question. According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions, it is a definite yes.--Huaiwei (talk) 19:04, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Ha! I actually wouldn't make much fuss if we were to do that. I'd bet Myanmar is much more recognizable than Yangon. So much more recognizable, in fact, that people didn't swarm to the Yangon talk page after the monks protest, to have the article's name changed. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

But seriously....how many votes would it be to consider consensus being reached? MethMan47 (talk) 00:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

More than 44%, to be certain! (According to the current straw poll, support for changing to Myanmar has less than 44% of total votes cast.) The Jade Knight (talk) 21:09, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually 47% of the votes are for Myanmar, 43% for Burma, and 9% for slitting the two articles. So by your logic....MethMan47 (talk) 01:21, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Let's see. The general principle in an Rfa is that 'consensus to promote' requires about 75% support votes. Applying that logic to 'consensus for changing the name of an article' (in both cases, there is a change to the status quo), should also require 75% of the vote! --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 01:27, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus

If one ignores the pro-Myanmar editors, who really don't matter, then there is quite a clear consensus in favor of Burma. Can we now close this discussion? --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 07:13, 15 May 2008 (UTC) t(-_-t)

If there were a "Wikipedia classics" archive this would definitely be there :-) --   Avg    07:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Ha, well of course there is a clear consensus for Burma if you ignore us pro-Myanmar people. MethMan47 (talk) 18:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I may have to dispute this... I seem to remember three or four votes for splitting it into two articles. If you also erase that from existence, though... -BaronGrackle (talk) 18:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lazy People

OK, even if there is a consensus for Burma, and even if the media uses it, there is a clear consensus from the Burmese people, the Government of the Union of Myanmar, and the United Nations, that the country has been called Myanmar for 17 years!

The only reachable conclusion is that people must be too lazy to say the extra syllable. No one today calls Serbia "Yugoslavia," because it is two more syllables. Similarily, after the Republic of Yugoslavia was formed, no one called it the "Kingdom of the Serbs, the Croats, and the Slovenes." So why do we continually spit in the face of the Burmese people and government and insult them by calling them Burma? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.216.121.250 (talk) 14:15, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you are incorrect. The overwhelming majority of the Burmese people (who care) prefer that the English-speaking world refer to the country as "Burma" rather than "Myanmar" as they consider "Myanmar" exclusive to one ethnicity and illegitimately changed anyway. Kaldari (talk) 15:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I keep seeing the phrase "The overwhelming majority of Burmese people". Does anyone have a citation for that? How does everyone know what the Burmese people call their country? It would be interesting to see, and may help everyone reach a consensus. Bluesmanjay (talk) 16:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

It is a bit complicated. The overwhelming majority of Burmese people speak no English, so it doesn't matter what they call their country. The few who do either don't care that much (any educated Burman is aware of both Burma and Myanmar) except when they explicitly disapprove of the junta's right to rename their country. Thus, the stated position of the NLD is that the country is called Burma. The Karen's call it Burma (and are, in general, unhappy that their ethnic group has been renamed Kayin, at least those that get to talk to western media are unhappy). The Indians are too beaten down to care. The Shans, probably the best integrated ethnic group, consider themselves Shan first, Burmese (or Myanma) second. The Kachin's who practically run their own part of the country are not interested in the name of the country. The Nagas are not even recognized by the Burmese government (apparently, and this will come as a shock to the many Naga in Burma, there are no Nagas in Burma) so there is no point asking them. The palaung, the wa, one could go on and on. No, I don't think we can look to the Burmese people for help. My personal experience in Burma is that both names are used interchangeably when speaking in English to an outsider, with Myanmar dominating in public, and Burma in private. To be fair, this is complicated by the fact that most non-Burman visitors who communicate in English (French, Germans, Indians) call the country Burma or something that sounds like Burma. If you were a Burman involved in tourism, it would be much easier to say 'Burma' than 'Myanmar' when referring to your country. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 16:49, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

One thing that is certain about the overwhelming majority of the Burmese people is that they would be completely bemused by this discussion, by the very idea that there are people arguing over what name should go on a web page. They will think that we, all of us, are completely crazy!--Regents Park (Feed my swans) 17:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MY IDEA

Let's call this page Myanmar and make Burma a redirect to it. Therefore, if you type in Burma, you get Myanmar and if you have an IQ with three digits you should know Myanmar is Burma. Mayakii (talk) 14:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem with your idea is that, by definition, half the people in the world have an IQ in 2 digits! --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 14:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I think calling the article Myanmar with a redirect from Burma is the best solution. As the country's name is Myanmar (even if we all disagree with the government that changed the name, it's still did it, and that's what it's called) and a vast majority of people will be searching for Burma, and will be redirected to the appropriate article (which explains in it the name change). Anyone else agree? Bluesmanjay (talk) 16:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Sad as I am to say, if you believe that the vast majority of people will be searching for Burma, you probably want to give your support to that name based on common usage. -BaronGrackle (talk) 16:33, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

How about having Myanmar redirect to Burma. That way the few people who call it Myanmar would know that it is Burma, and the vast majority of people who search for Burma would get taken straight there. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 05:23, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Modifying a line from Regents: The problem with your idea is that, by definition, half the people in the world are the "vast majority" while the other half are "the few people". Check out the last vote in the archives. -BaronGrackle (talk) 15:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other languages

So, how come only we English speakers care about changing Burma to Myanmar. Why is it that the French, the Spanish, etc. don't see the need to call the country Myanmar but continue, in their carefree way, with birmanie and birmania? --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 17:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Bah! Irrelevant. We could discuss why the French get closer to saying "España" correctly than the English do, but it wouldn't affect anything. Besides... I thought I had heard that most non-English governments recognize Myanmar. -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:09, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Not meant to be relevant. Just a point of curiosity on which I turned out to be wrong anyway. They're discussing the name as passionately in the French wikipedia as it is being discussed here. Vive la birmanie!

Really?! You learn something new... -BaronGrackle (talk) 17:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, perhaps not the same amount of passion. They've left it at Burma for a bit, but who knows what's coming up next. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 17:52, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Applying Wikipedia naming conventions

I know this has been mentioned several times already, but I think the most straightforward way out of this debate is to simply refer back to already established naming conventions. Now I know that blindly following policy won't always result in a good article, but in this case, I think the policy applies. After all, regardless of the word chosen for the title, the other name will redirect to the article (and probably be used in the lead as well), and a discussion of the difference between the names will follow in the article itself (indeed, the naming conflict has its own full article already). Thus, the specific title chosen doesn't affect that many readers; it is merely a matter of what is appropriate for Wikipedia. And what is "appropriate for Wikipedia" is easily drawn from its established policies.

Fortunately, the Wikipedia convention on naming conflicts has a specific section on how to choose between controversial proper nouns. Here is a direct quote (emphasis in original):

• If a native name has a common English-language equivalent, the English version takes precedence (e.g. Munich rather than München; China rather than Zhōngguó).
• If the name is a self-identifying term for the entity involved and there is no common English equivalent, use the name that the entity has adopted to describe itself.
• If the name is that of an inanimate or non-human entity, there is no common English equivalent and no dispute over the entity's name, use the official designation (or an English translation thereof) applied by the governing body of the jurisdiction in which the entity is predominately found (e.g. Orlické Mountains from the Czech Orlické hory).
• If the name of an inanimate or non-human entity is disputed by two jurisdictions and one or more English-language equivalents exists, use the commonest English-language name.
• If the name of an inanimate or non-human entity is disputed by two jurisdictions and there is no English-language equivalent, use the commonest non-English name.

A number of objective criteria can be used to determine common or self-identifying usage:

• Is the name in common usage in English? (check Google, other reference works, websites of media, government and international organisations; focus on reliable sources)
• Is it the official current name of the subject? (check if the name is used in a legal context, e.g. a constitution)
• Is it the name used by the subject to describe itself or themselves? (check if it is a self-identifying term)

Subjective criteria (such as "moral rights" to a name) should not be used to determine usage. These include:

• Does the subject have a moral right to use the name?
• Does the subject have a legal right to use the name?
• Does the name infringe on someone else's legal or moral rights?
• Is the use of the name politically unacceptable?

As far as the objective criteria listed above are concerned, it is unknown whether Burma or Myanmar is more common in English (see below), but Myanmar is the official current name of the country, and both Burma and Myanmar are derivatives of words that the natives of this country use to describe it. Furthermore, the argument that "the military junta has no right to change the name" quite obviously falls under the subjective criteria listed above, and thus should not be used to determine the title of the article.

Thus, it seems to me that the only argument for choosing Burma over Myanmar is if it clearly is the more common English usage overall. As others have indicated before, this is quite questionable: Myanmar returns more Google hits (with 9,080,000 English-only results vs. 2,790,000 English-only results for Burma, last I checked), and other encyclopedias near-universally use Myanmar, but the news media is split in their usage, and the governments of the prominent English-speaking nations use Burma. However, they do so for specific political reasons, and the UN (which I think should be considered, as one of the most important "international organisations" referred to in the quote above) uses Myanmar. In my opinion, it seems that Myanmar is more common among English speakers on average (particularly if you include non-native speakers of English), but the concentration varies enough from place to place that that's going to be very difficult to prove.

So in the event of an inability to decide which term is more common, the other two objective criteria listed above should be used, which in this case seems to indicate using Myanmar, not Burma.

Rundquist (talk) 05:43, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. There are numerous assumptions in your reasoning that are the basis of this dispute but which you present as facts.

1. That there is no "common English language equivalent". This is not true since Burma is the common English language equivalent. It has been so for the last four centuries and, unless it is proved otherwise, remains so.
2. The name, Burma, is in common usage. You don't have to check google to see that it is in common usage. (Since it is the common English language equivalent, there is no need to compare google hits with Myanmar.)
3. It boggles my mind that anyone can think that more people recognize Myanmar over Burma. (As I have argued before, if you've heard of Myanmar, you've heard of Burma.)
4. particularly if you include non-native speakers of English. This is not backed up by any evidence. Just because the government of India uses Myanmar, it does not follow that the English speaking people of India use Myanmar. It is quite likely that the contrary is true because India has had long historical and personal ties with Burma and has few ties with what is now called Myanmar. No, they pretty much use Burma. (Of course, there is no statistical evidence but that should be provided by the wikipedians seeking change.) If you add the French, the Spanish, the Germans, the Swedes, to the mix, they are all probably more familiar with Burma than Myanmar because the name in their language is closer to Burma.

It seems to me that the only reason to change to Myanmar is because it is the official name given by the government. That, as any wikipedian should no, is not a good enough reason. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 15:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

And it seems to me that the only reason to use Burma is because it is the official name used by the British and American governments? That, as wikipedia's policies should show, is not a good reason in any way either. You appear very selective when highlighting viewpoints expressed by others.--Huaiwei (talk) 19:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

That's not very nice Huaiwei. I could say the same about you (but I won't). --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 19:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Of course you could say that. I was directly demonstrating what you just did by being just as selective, so thanks for acknowledging your own fallacy. ;)--Huaiwei (talk) 21:49, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, RegentsPark. Allow me to clarify my reasoning behind the assumptions that you list above:

1. I never said that "there is no common English language equivalent." Indeed, you could say that Myanmar and Burma are both common English language equivalents. I merely said that "it is unknown whether Burma or Myanmar is more common in English," and proceeded to list the reasons why I felt the issue was in doubt. You say that "Burma is the common English language equivalent", and while that may be true historically, I have yet to see a convincing argument either way as to the current usage, which is what we are really worried about. I merely felt that since one term is not clearly more common than the other, we should revert to the other criteria: the official current name (which is Myanmar), or what the people identify their country as in their own language (which, as others have pointed out, has words that correspond to both "Burma" and "Myanmar").
2. Here again, you merely assert that "Burma is in common usage." I don't argue that, but so is Myanmar. I, at least, have heard Myanmar more often lately than I have Burma. Allow me to respectfully suggest that different regions vary wildly with respect to the percentage of people calling the country by the one name or the other, and perhaps your region or community favors Burma, while mine favors Myanmar. This makes it extremely difficult to judge the actual overall usage.
3. Why do you say that "if you've heard of Myanmar, you've heard of Burma"? I know some people who (I'm sad to say) had never heard of the country before it was in the news recently, and their usage strongly reflects the usage of whichever media source they regularly depend on. Indeed, the anonymous poster below attests to having heard of Myanmar before having heard of Burma.
4. I agree, I did not offer any evidence for my assertion about non-native speakers of English. This is why I stated that it was merely my own opinion. Indeed, I would be glad to see some more thorough research on the overall English usage of either term. The article was at one point titled Myanmar--does anyone remember if any statistics were put forth when it was changed to Burma?

Again, thanks for your thoughtful opinion. I didn't mean this to be a definitive argument why Myanmar is better; I merely wanted to emphasize the idea that since it is in doubt which term is more common, perhaps we should try the other criteria in the Wikipedia naming conventions, as outlined above. Rundquist (talk) 05:08, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why do we call Zimbabwe Zimbabwe and not Rhodesia

Myanmar, or something that sounds like it, has always been part of the official name of the country in its own language. The British imperialists when they colonized the area decided to name the place Burma because they did not want to call it Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw. Now the government of the country (which like the government Zimbabwe is not a real western democracy) rejects the name the imperialists gave them and wants the international community to call it Myanmar. They think the name Burma is disrespectful because Burma is just the common spoken name of the country and not the official witten name in the Burmese language. Why do we, therefore, insist on calling the country by what the name the imperialists called it - Burma? We didn't do that with Zimbabwe because we realized just how much the name, Rhodesia, was associated with colonialism. Well the same is true with Burma when it is used in an official context. Its like calling a person by a nickname and not his real name.

There are people who say that we shouldn't call the country by what the Junta calls it but why should we call it by what the imperialists called it. At least the name created by the Junta was decided on by people who were actually burmese.

Also, I knew the country by the name of Myanmar before I knew it by the name of Burma. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.147.106.153 (talk • contribs) 19:49, 16 May 2008

It is not easy to draw an analogy with Zimbabwe. When Rhodesia became independent in 1980, it was through a popular liberation struggle and Mugabe and Nkomo had clear popular support for the name change. Though Mugabe is, sadly, a bad guy these days, and has successfully jettisoned any vestiges of democracy (as well as Nkomo) from his government, it was not always this way. With Burma, on the other hand, the facts are as follows. In 1989, the government changed the name from Burma to Myanmar. This name change was rejected by the NLD, by the Shan National League, by the Arakan League for Democracy, by practically every other political party in the country. In 1990, one year after the name change, these parties (the ones that rejected the name change) won an election by an overwhelming majority. About 75% of the electorate that voted, voted for the parties that had rejected the change. Of course, the elections were not a referendum on the name of Burma, but the facts are that the parties backed by 75% of the electorate had rejected the name change. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 12:07, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the analogy is that far off. True, the political situations are different, but the goal of Wikipedia is to be descriptive, not prescriptive: the argument is not about what the title of the country ought to be, only what it is. And the fact remains that the current political entity is the Union of Myanmar. Another example is that many English speakers recognize Calcutta more easily than Kolkata, but the latter is where the article is located. In the case of Burma/Myanmar, I wouldn't mind having separate articles either, just as Rhodesia deals with the historical usage of that name, and links to Zimbabwe, which deals with the current political entity. -Rundquist (talk) 15:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you in principle. I am loathe to use the validity of the name change by the junta as an argument (even though I am convinced that when the junta goes so will Myanmar). My comment was in response to the 'imperialist' argument and analogy with Rhodesia/Zimbabwe (the 'people who were actually burmese' part). But, I agree that this should not be the basis for deciding on the name of the article.--Regents Park (Feed my swans) 16:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Myanmar and Burma (Separate Articles)

See Talk:Burma/Myanmar#Civilization_vs._Regime for discussion.

1. The two are clearly separate in the minds of most people, and separating these two, as so many other articles have been separated, should appease all sides. The Jade Knight (talk) 07:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
2. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to be voting or listing arguments here. Anyway, I support this. People seem to think that if someone doesn't call something the same thing that they do, then that person is "wrong". We should stop trying to mould things to fit what we believe and instead fit our beliefs around reality: the reality is that the country has two names with two slightly different connotations: Myanmar seems to indicate something more present and future, whereas Burma refers to something from the past. So let's alter Wikipedia accordingly. 87.194.217.99 (talk) 11:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
3. Let's use the names properly used in English sources: Burma for the historical country pre-junta, and Myanmar for the country as it is today. This is how Wikipedia generally deals with historical changes of this magnitude. --Gimme danger (talk) 14:46, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
4. That seems a reasonable suggestion, though it sets an uncomfortable precedent for countries that retain the same borders, people, and history but have a very different government. I don't think it's a perfect solution, but it seems reasonable and I certainly wouldn't object.Somedumbyankee (talk) 05:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Press Access

One thought on the usage of Burma vs. Myanmar in news articles: a news agency that uses the "official" name as prescribed by the dictatorship is more likely to be able to get access to the country, because it shows that they're willing to comply with the government's orders. Flaunting the difference in name isn't a good idea if you don't want to offend the people who give you a visa to enter. Somedumbyankee (talk) 05:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Name has been changed and the rationale behind it

I have changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar. Last week I had put up a straw poll just to ascertain the key points for both the names: Myanmar vs Burma. Now topics of such a nature do raise sentiments of a lot of people, and consensus or supermajority is never going to be straight and easy process. Therefore, to ascertain the upshot such a debate, logic and clear reasoning sans sentiment should prevail. These are my findings and reasoning:

The pro-Mayanmar group had a much clearer and logical view

• WP:NCON -- The fact is that the name of the country was changed from Burma to Myanmar. Wikipedia reports facts.
• WP Naming conventions: If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local official name
• The name was arbitrary moved without a clear consensus
• Myanmar is recognized used by the United Nations and several other international bodies
• Political statements have no place in Wikipedia. That is, if several countries do not recognise the regime (and hence the name), it does not mean that the name is not existent.

The pro-Burma had subjective viewpoints

• The unelected Military leadership had no authority to change it. [Comment added by Nichalp: Unelected or not, it is not for Wikipedia to take sides on the legitimacy of elections and national leadership.]
• For what it's worth, most people I know have never heard of the word 'Myanmar' --> [Comment added by Nichalp: Ignorantia juris non excusat. Being unaware of the new name cannot be held as an excuse.]
• I think this is still the most widely used name -- very subjective. [Comment added by Nichalp: As an encyclopaedia, we report facts, not opinion.]

Other good arguments

• Failure to recognize a government does not equate to non-existence of said government. Like it or not, Myanmar is ruled by a military dictatorship and the name was officially changed by that government (81.208.106.64)
• Political leanings of editors here should have no say whatsoever on what goes on here on Wikipedia. If "Myanmar" is what the ruling regime calls it in English, then "Myanmar" it is. Whether the ruling regime is a democracy or a dictatorship or a tribal outfit is inconsequential. We are not here to fight for democracy in Burma or China. We are here just to report facts. (Sarvagnya)

Comments made by pro-Burma on local name vs anglicised name

A lot has been made on the issue of Germany/Deutschland, Japan/Nippon and so on. One is the anglicised name and the other is the local name. However what was not covered in the debate is that they do not compete for the same turf. Further, Burma is not an anglicised name of Myanmar. In this particular case, the government officially changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar, and ensured that the name of the country in the English language was also changed. Additionally, when a government changes the name of a geographic entity, they inform all governments and international organizations of the name change, to put it into international effect. This was not taken into consideration.

An issue that was not brought up was the relocation of the capital from Yangoon to Naypyidaw. Parallelisms can be drawn in the same manner. If the present government of Myanmar operates from the new capital, it would be a fallacy to state on Wikipedia that the Naypyidaw is not the administrative and legislative capital of Myanmar. Thus, in effect, irrespective of the legitimacy of the current regime, the new capital is recognised as the seat of governance of the present day rulers of Myanmar.

On common use

Quite a bit has said and misinterpreted about the common use criteria. This is the raison d'être for the pro-Burma name. Now, the common use criteria is meant for names that are far more commonly used by the general population in daily life. In most cases, official use and common use and are congruous with each other. For example Republic of India vs India; Commonwealth of Australia vs Australia, Russian Federation vs Russia. By using Google to determine Myanmar vs Burma does not prove anything on how commonly used a name is. It will only determine the online prevalence of the names.

Renaming criteria

Several Wikipedia policies come into play for the name

• WP:COMMONNAME
• WP:ENGLISH

Our policy is clear and ambiguous: Wikipedia is descriptive, not prescriptive. We cannot declare what a name should be, only what it is. And I have use this to make the final decision.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to remind everyone the purpose of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a neutral encyclopaedia that aims to deliver rich, updated, relevant, and accurate content. If the country is officially called by a new name in the English language by its political masters, Wikipedia must reflect it. By redirecting the old name to the new name, a reader will be alerted to the fact that there is a name change, and would read more why the name was changed. This is the purpose of an encyclopaedia -- To Instruct and Teach objectively. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:23, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

How you can claim this with a straw poll in which Myanmar prevails by only one vote - meaning no consensus to any objective observer of this discussion - is beyond me. The burden of proof was on the supporters of the Myanmar name to overturn consensus, and they failed. I will not revert you since I have no taste for conflict this evening, but I urge you not to begin the category move until this matter is resolved since that's much more of a bitch than a simple article. --Hemlock Martinis (talk) 08:33, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Please note I never said that I used the results of the poll to determine the move change, rather a summary of each editor's rationale behind it to summarize the salient points. I'm sorry, but moves of this nature cannot be based on straw polls. Objective reasoning and wikipedia policies must take precedence over numbers. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

As all polls can be ballot stuffed with ridiculous answers, an indication of a poll as consensus cannot be used. The poll was even open to IPs as the rationale behind the argument meant more than the simple !vote. Further, Hemlock Martinis, tell me, how objective is the reasoning of one of the pro-Burma supporters to mention that he prefers the name because his girlfriend has not heard of it?! =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:52, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow... Nichalp you're a little subjective yourself, are you not? Reading this little section of yours really gives me the idea of (Personal attack removed). But, you got your way (or as you would say: Wikipedia's legitimacy was upheld), so at least you're happy. And before you say sour grapes, the name isn't that important to me. But it's good to know if I take over Canada and unilaterally name it BOOULABOOULAWOOULABOO and the UN is retarded enough to recognize it, that Wikipedia will follow suit. Beam 11:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, Myanmar is fine, but the way you did it isn't. Beam 11:30, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Pray then, how would you do it? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• There does not seem to have been consensus for this move and so I shall revert it. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• I find that the Move tab does not appear on the Myanmar article - presumably it has been protected in some way. Please clarify the status of this matter. Has User:Nichalp improperly used his admin tools in support of his position on the content? Colonel Warden (talk) 13:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

  Here start the conspiracy stories. To clarify, I used the move button, nothing more. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:46, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

  In fairness to Nichalp, the page was move protected by others for unrelated reasons. Myanmar was move protected by User:Philip Baird Shearer on Feb 16th with the message disptute over the naming of the page should be settled thorough a WP:RM not by cut and past edits [edit=sysop:move=sysop]). Burma was protected by User:Ryulong on Apr 29th with no summary but apparently in response to vandalism.

• I am not familiar with the full history and details of this - that is why I solicited more information, for which I thank you. As I understand what you're saying then, Nickalp has used his admin privilege to cut through the protections applied by the other admins. This might be considered improper wheel warring or is content editing through such protection another form of infraction? Colonel Warden (talk) 15:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I was not aware that the page was protected when I made the move. Neither was a message displayed on the protection when I made the move. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:00, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

There was no consensus. One administrator's opinion, however well thought out, does not change the issue that it is solely that administrator's opinion.Somedumbyankee (talk) 16:02, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you understand by consensus? =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I can't speak for Somedumbyankee, but it's clear to me as a newcomer to this Talk page that whatever "consensus" means there is not enough of it here to justify the change you just made on grounds of consensus. I can tell you're frustrated by the debate, but I'd suggest there is still compromise to be negotiated here and that administrative fiat is misplaced. Webmink (talk) 18:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

More or less, I expect that consensus would mean that the person making the change does not have to explain in any detail why. Your voice is welcome in the debate as an editor and you make good points but no substantial change has been made in argument since the last arbitration (that I'm aware of). Stare decisis is my expectation unless a process overrules it or no one reasonably objects. I see at least one reasonable objection (i.e. the elected government rejected the name change and is the "authority" specified in the naming policy) and see many editors who are "pro-Burma" and are willing to contest the change. In my opinion, making a change in name at this point is too bold.Somedumbyankee (talk) 20:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

To quote two of the reasons you give:

" 1 - Myanmar is recognized used by the United Nations and several other international bodies. 2 - Political statements have no place in Wikipedia. That is, if several countries do not recognise the regime (and hence the name), it does not mean that the name is not existent." So you use the fact the United Nations recognise the name as a justification in one line, and, in the very next line, state political statements on recognition of countries have no place in Wikipedia? It is obvious you are pick and choosing your "facts" to support your supposedly "neutral" opinion. If you were truly neutral and interested in debate, you would not have changed the name without warning or consultation.Angstriddenyouth (talk) 20:09, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The move

Nichalp, I assume you are an administrator since you feel that your conclusions are open to action without the need for discussion. However, do note that being an administrator does not give you the fiat to do whatever you like even when there is no consensus on a topic. If you feel that your arguments are stronger than those of others, please first make them, wait for reactions and counter arguments, wait for a consensus, and then make the move. I don't disagree with your conclusions (and, to some extent am happy that this over since using the name 'Myanmar' will at least end the fruitless discussion on the topic) but the way you've gone about it is not what one would expect from an admin. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 13:33, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

RegentsPark, I'm not sure what you may consider "expected from an admin". I had opened the debate, created a straw poll, watched it for a week, including the followup, prodded participants on both sides to give objective reasoning, and did not participate in the debate. In this case I have remained completely neutral. Had I participated, I might have been accused of favouritism. Next, I disagree with your assertion on the point of a consensus. How does one reach a consensus for such a controversial topic? If it is just a simple poll, a bot like Tangobot might as well evaluate it and enforce the move. Else, throw in a bunch of socks to enforce a single viewpoint. Shouldn't clear reasoning and established wikipolicies be given a priority? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Nichalp, we don't go for straw polls on some dark corner of Wikipedia for this. We formulate move proposals that are listed on WP:RM so that everyone is aware of them and may participate. That's what caused this article to be moved to "Burma" last October. Your action is unilateral and against process. Please undo your move. Húsönd 14:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Husnod, from Wikipedia:Requested moves I quote: In some situations, the value of a move may be under dispute, and discussion is necessary in order to reach a consensus. There is no obligation to list such move requests here; discussions of page moves can always be carried out at the article's talk page without adding an entry. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:11, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Nichalp, I don't object to the move as much as I do to the way it was done. You have stated in the past that you did not agree to the move to Myanmar so your position is fairly well known and favoritism would be better addressed by confronting the issues head on than by pretending to take the high road. Staying out of the discussion, not building bridges with people with the opposite viewpoint, and then unilaterally making a change is not conducive to a healthy editing environment. An admin should actively seek to engage in the discussion, especially when they are known to hold a particular viewpoint. I'm trying to be charitable here but it does seem to me that a low-key straw poll was initiated with the end result pre-ordained. I'm fine with Myanmar but I'm not to happy that my time has been wasted here. And, as Husond has stated on your talk page, you should know that the move will be controversial precisely because no consensus has been reached and you should take it to WP:RM. It is important for an admin to be purer than the rest of us and I refuse to believe that you've not tried to be a neutral party but will say that it doesn't appear to be that way. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 14:55, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want to accuse me of favouritism then fine so be it. I am not here to debate on my opinion. When you speak of consensus, how would you determine when consensus has been reached? What criteria would you use? This is what is given in Wikipedia:consensus: In determining consensus carefully consider the strength and quality of the arguments themselves, including the evolution of the final positions, the objection of those who disagree, and in complex situations, existing documentation in the project namespace. Minority opinions typically reflect genuine concerns, and the logic may outweigh the logic of the majority. Could you point out if the logic of my outcome is flawed? Its easy to accuse me of personal bias, but is the move illogical?

The move is always going to be controversial, and I am aware of the implications. I have also quoted several pertinent points that were made not in the straw poll but else where. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not accusing you of favoritism (I said I refuse to believe you've not tried to be a neutral party). You said you stayed out because you did not want to give the appearance of favoritism and my response was that, given that you're known to have a viewpoint, staying out achieves nothing and by staying out and then unilaterally making the change, you're not exactly achieving your objective of appearing to be an unbiased party. About the consensus, if a consensus has not been achieved and you have carefully considered the strength and quality of the argument, you should present those strong arguments first, give people the time to either accept them or state why they are not as strong as you think, and then, if you can't sway any hearts and minds, take it to WP:RM with your reasons. The way you've done it, I can't help but feel that we've been bushwhacked.--Regents Park (Feed my swans) 15:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry if you feel that way. I have stated my reasons for making the move listing the merits of each point. =Nichalp «Talk»= 15:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Like I said before the merits of your points are not really the issue here but no worries. A few quotes from WP:Consensus: Consensus can only work among reasonable editors who make a good faith effort to work together in a civil manner. I take that to mean that editors should be engaged in the discussion and not watching from outside. If BaronGrackle moved the article, that would be less upsetting. (Actually, if Barongrackle were bold enough to move the article and left a message on my talk page saying that the discussion is getting out of hand, I might even respect the move and not personally revert it.) If editing of the page is impeded by edit wars, or is disrupted, or consensus cannot be found on the talk page through ordinary discussion, there are more formal dispute resolution processes. In this case, no formal dispute resolution process has been followed. I guess I've said my piece (again and again :-) ) So I'll shut up for now. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 16:06, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The way this page was moved and the reasoning behind it are nothing short of a scandal. This is just another proof that English language Wikipedia is too big and unwieldy to work under current procedures, which is why I no longer edit regularly.

I have made my arguments, so I am loath to repeat them in full. However, I just want to comment on the following:

Further, Burma is not an anglicised name of Myanmar.

Well, Burma is an Anglicization of an alternative name of Burma/Myanmar.

Quite a bit has said and misinterpreted about the common use criteria. This is the raison d'être for the pro-Burma name.

I have said it before and I am saying it again. If you compare the number of hits for Burma and Myanmar in academic databases like JSTOR or Google Books, Burma beats Myanmar with a wide margin. Whatever.--Amban (talk) 14:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

What you mention is using a filter to determine the prevalence of the name. The filtration criteria can be easily manipulated by either camp to suit their goals. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I thought that academic sources did have a weight on Wikipedia, apparently you know better than me.--Amban (talk) 18:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

This move is long overdue. Congratulations. Neutrality trumps individuals opinions every time. Thanks, SqueakBox 14:48, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Erm, don't buy firecrackers just yet. Húsönd 14:55, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The fallacy of Nichalp's move

Nichalp, it is quite obvious from the explanation of your decision that you are entirely biased in this matter, especially regarding your description of the pro-Burma rationale. This debate has nothing to do with politics, nor does it have anything to do with local name vs anglicised name. No one is seriously claiming that "Burma" or "Myanmar" are Anglicizations. They are both English names of the country. The Anglicizations are Myanma (literary) and Bama (colloquial). "Nippon" and "Deutchland" are false comparisons. A proper comparison would be East Timor. East Timor's official English name as dictated by it's government is "Timor-Leste", yet Wikipedia, and most of the English speaking world still refer to it as "East Timor". The only issue that is relevant to this debate is usage, and it has been well demonstrated, here and elsewhere, that current English-language usage is nearly evenly divided. Thus there is no reason within our policies, barring consensus otherwise, to move the article. What the United Nations has to say is completely irrelevant to our debate here. And it is very telling that you cite the UN's opinion under the pro-Mayanmar groups "clear logic", but mention nothing of the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK not recognizing "Myanmar". If you are going to compare the logic of the 2 sides, you should at least attempt to appear impartial about it. Kaldari (talk) 16:21, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Given that there was clearly no consensus to move the article, it appears that this entire "straw poll" was little more than a pretense. Indeed, no unbiased reading of this debate (or the numerous previous debates) could see it as anything other than the community being evenly divided. By ignoring that fact, and acting unilaterally, Nichalp has demonstrated that he believes his own opinion to be more important than the opinions of the community. More importantly, he has abused his administrative powers by effectively ignoring one side of the debate and moving a protected article despite a clear lack of consensus on a very contentious issue. I have posted a notice on the Administrator's noticeboard to this effect. Kaldari (talk) 16:58, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Well in that it was no different from the original move, which was also done without consensus. looks to me like we are back where we started. Thanks, SqueakBox 17:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Kaldari, I assume that Wikipedia naming policies are less relevant to you. Again there is no comparison with western countries vs the UN. The UN is not a political organization, although some might consider it to be. Why should the recognition of western or eastern countries be given prevalence? Why not apolitical international bodies? FYI, the straw poll was not conducted to fill numbers to determine the page move, rather to determine the summary behind the reasons of the move. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:14, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You're correct: the opinions of the governments of English-speaking countries are no more important than the opinion of the UN to this debate (both are irrelevant). I was just pointing out the inconsistency in your rationale for moving the article. Of course Wikipidia's naming convention is important to me, indeed, I believe it is paramount. My reading of the guidelines clearly differs from yours, however. Kaldari (talk) 17:21, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• In effect, Nichalp didn't determine the consensus of the poll (which is something an involved editor with an opinion is unlikely to be able to do effectively anyway) - he made a determination of the strength of the opposing arguments, and sided with one in the absence of consensus. That isn't always a bad thing - sometimes required in AfDs and other areas. But in those cases it is done by an uninvolved administrator, not an involved administrator moving against move protection. If a poll on the talk page (not a subpage) doesn't result in a clear consensus, then the article should stay at Burma. In the mean time, it should be moved back to Burma. Avruch ^T 19:23, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

  I think Nichalp applied more reasoned thought than we saw in October when the article was moved from Myanmar in the first place. There was as much consensus then as there is now, and yet, that move also went ahead anyway. I would claim he has simply restored the long-time status quo, and now is the appropriate starting point for a discussion to propose the move to Burma. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:33, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• I totally agree with Avruch. Besides, we could just simply move this back to Burma with one of those edit summaries we use when someone unpleased with the result of a move proposal tries to act unilaterally- "rv, current title discussed and approved per move proposal on the talk page". The fact that Nichalp is an admin/bureaucrat shouldn't make any difference (apart from the fact that it is far more concerning). I'll do it myself if nobody else does, since Nichalp clearly won't acknowledge and revert his mistake. Húsönd 19:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Well I hope you do not do so, Husond, it would appear like wheel warring to push a point, and probably result in all involved facing arbcom sanctions. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not wheel warring to undo an admin's actions when they're clearly unjustified and against process. Besides, Nichalp was the first one to push a point by reverting another admin's decision to move this article to Burma. Húsönd 22:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Save Burma!!!!!

The name of this article has been changed, without consultation, from "Burma" to "Myanmar" by a user named "Nichalp" on the basis of a straw poll, which currently stands at 17 votes for "Myanmar" and 16 votes for "Burma."[[85]] Up until yesterday there were more votes for "Burma." If you believe in Democracy please sign this straw poll in favour of "Burma," so we can change the name back. Decisions of this kind should not be taken by one person. Angstriddenyouth (talk) 17:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

WP:Wikipedia is not a democracy. I think User:Nichalp's rationale is sound, and at least as reasonable as the rationale behind the move from "Myanmar" to "Burma" last October. Therefore, this latest move is simply a restoration of the long-term status quo for this article. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:05, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Prior discussion had concluded there was no consensus on the name change. For one user to decide to take the name change into his own hands, citing a Straw Poll which until yesterday showed a majority in favour of the name "Burma", and a series of partisan, subjective statements as justification is inappropriate and mistaken. By the way, I am aware that Wikipedia is not a democracy. I was referring to democracy in Burma. - Angstriddenyouth (talk) 18:12, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

If you are aware that "Wikipedia is not a democracy", then you should know that the count of votes in a straw poll is meaningless. Nichalp made it quite clear that he closed the discussion based on the actual comments people made, not the raw "vote" totals. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think political statements like "If you believe in Democracy... I was referring to democracy in Burma" help this discussion. It keeps dragging it back into the realm on political statements about the regime in this country, not about what is the most commonly used name in the English speaking world. Wikipedia is not the place to set trends, it follows them. Timrollpickering (talk) 18:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The "Important Notice" informing users of the name change mentioned the straw poll as justification. I do not call this making it "quite clear" it had nothing to do with the vote totals. I have read through his summary for the change, and it is clear that he is partisan, and in summarising the arguments in favour of "Burma" was brief and dismissive. I realise there are arguments in favour of the name "Myanmar", but to simply dismiss the name "Burma", and use instead a name which is not recognised by most English speaking countries (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, etc..) is a mistake. I would have accepted a change to the name "Burma/Myanmar" (as used by the EU) but to dismiss the name "Burma" out of hand is not to recognise the controversy. There is no clear consensus on the name change, and this should be made clear, not ignored.Angstriddenyouth (talk) 18:30, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Let me add that the title of this comment section is very telling about the rationale behind many of the pro-Burma comments. It evokes a political plea of persecution, essentially protesting against the military rule. It implies that this decision is bad for the Burmese people. Regardless of the final decision, it is not. It is simply a naming convention, and the article makes it quite clear in what context each name is used elsewhere. WP:NCON makes it quite clear what to do when there is ambiguity between two possible choices for the naming convention. BigBlueFish (talk) 19:59, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It does, but it does not of many others. Húsönd 20:12, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

This header implies that those of us supporting the Myanmar name are somehow in favour of the current regime instead of simply being in favour of NPOV. We are here to write an encyclopedia, not forward a political agenda. Thanks, SqueakBox 20:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

There was a clear double meaning in the title of this comment section. Yes, I want to save the name "Burma", as to use the name imposed by the Junta, but never ratified by the Burmese people or recognised by the International community, is, in a small, but nonetheless important way, to add legitmacy to that regime. There is no clear consensus on the use of the name "Myanmar", so any decision to use the name, whatever reasons given, is subjective. I realise you could read the title "Save Burma" in another way, and that was not accidental. But that's another topic. Angstriddenyouth (talk) 20:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Well perhaps "Burma" name supporters now understand how we "Myanmar" supporters felt when the name was changed some months ago after being stable for years at Myanmar. I consider Nichalp's justified move a return to status quo ante.--   Avg    20:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC) Yes, me too, well expressed, AVG. Thanks, SqueakBox 20:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unsound arguements and solutions

For an article to be changed, there of course needs to be a consensus amoung all the wikipedians because what the wikipedian community says is always the truth. *note the sarcasm* Just because someone puts his own opinion above the opinions of the community, does not mean that we need to ostrasize him or call him an "An Enemy of The Poeple"

On the other hand, the name was disputed. There was a lock on the topic because an ongoing discussion was being made. Not only did Nichalp impose his own opinion above the opinions of the community (which in ethics, is not always wrong), but he did so without giving prior notice that he would be the sole objective judge of the debate and that he would change the title unilaterally. When he created the straw poll, he did not mention that he alone would determine the title from what our arguements were based on and from whether he thought our arugemetns were logical or not. The whole reason why we have a discussion or a poll about this is so that the community can have an effect on what the article's title is, and while an unbiased judge is acceptable, the judge needs to have made himself known. Otherwise, the community doesn't have a clear idea of what is going on and cannot properly do its job. In other words, what Nichalp did, was swindle the people participating in this discussion whether he intended to or not.

Now he says that he did not know that the topic was locked. Under normal circumstances, the topic's title should be reverted back to its original title, but in this case, the original title is and has been heavily disputed, and legitamacy of its origin is also questionable.

Now, the article needs a title.

Can anyone present a reasonable arguement as to how we can resolve this conflict? (and not what the title should be). —Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnWycliff (talk • contribs)

Please assume the good faith of Nichalp. He is not the only person who has read this discussion and is not the only one who can see that more people have argued in favour of "Myanmar" on Wikipedia conventions' terms. It is also at best a divided consensus, in which case, status quo ante applies as has already been said. His action was in my view an excellent application of WP:BOLD. BigBlueFish (talk) 20:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the policy in depth, I agree that Myanmar (or Union of Myanmar) may be the more appropriate of the two names by policy ("between two names, use the authority's name">junta is recognized as government due to embassies>junta is authority) but I can see clear arguments against using the name and don't see a consensus. I see no realistic Liancourt Rocks option. A "Burma" article and a "Myanmar" article is clunky but appropriate. My guess is that Nichalp got a rough reception in part because of confusion about whether he was acting as editor (too bold, but in good faith) or admin (which would be inappropriate, WP:NBD). I agree with JohnWycliff that prior notice would have been very appropriate.Somedumbyankee (talk) 21:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] it should be Burma

Here are other countries that have similar debates.

• Greece (Hellenic Republic)
• Switzerland (Swiss Confederacy)
• Netherlands (Dutch)
• West Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire)
• Soviet Union (USSR)
• Russian Federation (Russian Federation) - often called Russian Federation instead of Russia
• Holy Roman Empire (Germany) - Holy Romans and Germans aren't the same.--4.245.76.125 (talk) 21:00, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

None are remotely similar, please consider refactoring your POV header, it isn't helpful. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:24, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The user that posted this an IP sock of indefinitely blocked disruptive user xgmx (talk · contribs · block log). If Angstriddenyouth wasn't yelling First Amendment all over the place I'd be tempted to delete the comment entirely. BigBlueFish (talk) 21:41, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware Myanmar had a first amendment. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] solution

We combine the two: The Burmese Union of Myanmar! PERFECT!--4.245.76.125 (talk) 21:02, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Or pehaps Myanmar (Burma). Thanks, SqueakBox 21:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

While a redirect is obviously a great idea, it's not really a suitable name for a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. BigBlueFish (talk) 21:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Would somebody give me an abbreviated reason, as to why there's so much resistants to the name Myanmar (particullary when the country name was changed years ago)? GoodDay (talk) 22:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Myanmar is resisted because most of the Western world sees the military government as illegitimate usurpers. Elected parties that never took power and figures like Aung San Suu Kyi have rejected the name change. Government publications and some other media persist with the Burma name for this reason, and the perception is that an "average guy" would be more likely to recognize Burma than Myanmar.

Burma was and remains the normal name for the country in English. For example, the BBC and The Times today have current stories using this name: Burma to mourn cyclone's victims; Burma junta shows signs of backtracking. Since these sources are respected journals of record, the proposed alternative seems absurd. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:28, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

You say that as if the two largest international news agencies, responsible for thousands of syndicated publications each day, don't use Myanmar. Or the largest metropolitan newspaper in the USA. The journals of record are divided; this is undisputable. BigBlueFish (talk) 23:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious about the other side. At least one can somewhat understand the passion on the Burma side but why exactly is there so much resistance to Burma when, even the editor who made the move, admits that it is not clear which name is more common? --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 23:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Because when it's unclear, the wisdom is to use the "official" name, over which its own government and the UN have the greatest defining authority. Understand that the more emotive and politically-charged argument there is in favour of Burma, the more people rush to defend the integrity of Wikipedia, which does not operate on the basis of political support or acceptance or justice, but on that of common usage, administrative authority and a neutral point of view. BigBlueFish (talk) 23:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the logic (by that logic, a whole lot of things should be renamed in wikipedia, but never mind). I'm curious as to why the passion? It's not as if the Myanmar guys love the government (though this comment [86] on this page about Aung San Suu Kyi's death is a little bizarre and very crude). Cultural imperialism is a possibility but given the dubious historical significance of the name (unless, of course, the Myanmar guys know little about the history of Burma) that seems unlikely. Some users have touted neutrality but Myanmar is clearly not a neutral name when you talk to the Karen or members of many other ethnic groups (unless the Myanmar guys have no clue who these Karen and other ethnic groups are and what their situation is vis-a-vis the official government of that country). But these are all reasons, why the passion? --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 16:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It's passion for Wikipedia that motivates me, at least. It sickens me that NPOV is gleefully disregarded because editors don't like the current regime. I think the Burmese people are monumental victims of their oppressive "leaders", but I don't want to disrupt Wikipedia's core policies as a means of personal protest. See Wikipedia:Request for Comment/Myanmar vs Burma for my additional comments. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:00, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the use of Burma is considered POV. It has been endorsed by the parties that rejected the name change and won more than 75% of the vote in an election immediately following the name change. Plus, Burma is a common English name for the country. Still, it is interesting to see your passion for wikipedia and I can only hope that it is backed up by a reasonably good grasp of the actual situation with the naming of Burma. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 17:06, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

You have identified exactly why the use of Burma is POV. Your comment assumes that the popular vote has a greater authority over the name than the Junta. That is a pro-democratic POV and Myanmar/Burma is clearly not a democracy. This is why it's so hard to eliminate the Western bias in Wikipedia. In terms of the most common usage, the political balance may affect this in the Burmese language but since it is not an English-speaking country, that isn't the same in English. The fact that there are huge media giants choosing both names shows that the English language state of affairs is far different. BigBlueFish (talk) 17:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I think I understand where the opposition is coming from now. And, it is comforting to know that, though my choice of a non-POV name for Burma may not be doing well, at least I chose my side wisely. --Regents Park (Feed my swans) 18:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I think it's just a response to the pro-Burma people being a little overenthusiastic, frankly. Why people get so hot and bothered about what the article is called bewilders me. I'm just a process wonk that wants to see things done in a disciplined fashion.Somedumbyankee (talk) 17:05, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

We've established that common usage is unclear. By "administrative authority" I'm guessing you mean policy and not "administrator authority", and the policy mostly supports Myanmar. Both terms are politically charged (foreign tyranny vs. domestic tyranny) and neither adequately meets NPOV in my mind. I don't see a reason to challenge the policy or WP:Ignore all rules, so it's Myanmar, but that doesn't make it a "wise" decision when two of the three points considered are at best ambiguous. Those that support the Burma name are not corrupt, biased, or "assaulting the integrity of Wikipedia", the policy is just a way to resolve disputes so we can move on.Somedumbyankee (talk) 00:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, back on topic-previous name disputes have taken some routes to consider:

• 1. Liancourt Rocks chose a neutral third name for islands contested by Japan and Korea. I don't see a practical third name. Burmese Union of Myanmar would be like saying "United States of USA." The two names are, more or less, different ways to spell the same Burmese word (the language is still Burmese?). Per policy, Myanmar (Burma) would imply there are multiple Myanmars that we can't otherwise tell apart.
• 2. Istanbul and Constantinople have separate articles for different time periods. This has been proposed. There's enough material for a separate article under the historical name and this could work. The Myanmar article would probably be limited to the history of the military government to reduce redundancy.
• 3. The infamous Gdansk article uses different names throughout the article as appropriate to the various time periods. This appears to be what is happening now. Zealous editors will sometimes go in and change the article name, though, and this is unlikely to be a permanent solution.
• For reference, WP:NCGN is the governing policy and there are other examples there. I prefer the separate article option.Somedumbyankee (talk) 23:01, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that #1 is impractical, while #2 seems like a pretty good idea, although the history may be too much in progress to do that right now in a neutral way. Note that Nyasaland redirects to History of Malawi and Constantinople is fundamentally a subpage of History of Istanbul. There is no reason not to cover the history under both names while it is still best organisational practice to do so. And #3 should most certainly be done regardless of the choice of title. Of course there will be many time-independent occurrences of the name as well which should match the title. BigBlueFish (talk) 23:37, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for names under #3 (Gdansk option), since that's the easy one.

pre-1752: "Area that includes the current state of Myanmar" or equivalent or just use Burmese, talk around it, or some other non-controversial term (may not be the last time we change this...). 1753-1885: This is the sticky one: Lower Burma and Upper Burma, or...? I would stick with Burma here simply because a lot of what's written about this period (in English) was written by the British when they were in charge. 1886-1989: Burma (British colonization to junta's name change). Any reference post-1989: Myanmar. [87]).Somedumbyankee (talk) 21:24, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] why the name Myanmar is resisted

The reason everyone here is resisting the name Myanmar is because it isn't official. I'll explain why.

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE SCENARIO THAT AMERICANS (and other peace loving countries) UNDERSTAND Brigadier General John Doe says "Hey I got a great idea lets start a coup and take over the United States!". He then shoots the president in the back of the head and says "I'm in charge now! I'll shoot anyone who protests against me being a Nazi". Then about 800 high school students protest for a democratic government and he has them all mercilessly shot in cold blood by Burma's form of the SS (in this scenario the new American SS). He then says "I know, I'll rename the United States....how about JRoerhtoertyoeyjohmfdthzT, thats the best name for a country, ya, this is great, oh look the stupid countries don't like the name and what I do, oh well there just gay cuss I'm in charge and there just stupid little countries that can't stop JRoerhtoertyoeyjohmfdthzT because were a superpower".--4.244.36.208 (talk) 21:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting; but Myanmar is the country's name. GoodDay (talk) 21:37, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

And were your unlikely scenario ever to happen we would move United States to JRoerhtoertyoeyjohmfdthzT. Its not fior us to judge the politics of Myanmar or the US, our job is to write an encyclopedia describing how things are. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

"How things are," is debatable. The party which won elections in Burma (a result the Junta ignored) uses "Burma." As far as I am aware, the majority of Burmese people prefer to use the name "Burma" when talking about their country. So does a large proportion of the Media and the International community. The crazy General example above is not without a point. You are saying "Myanmar" is the name of the country based on the unilateral decision of a bunch of murdering despots. Well Done.Angstriddenyouth (talk) 22:10, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if Myanmar is ruled by despots or not. Wikipedia is not a platform for Human Rights. GoodDay (talk) 22:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, right or wrong these Generals rule Myanmar. That is why Than Shwe and the others are in the infobox rather than those who won the election but do not in reality govern Myanmar. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:39, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Plus, your analogy isnt quite accurate. The junta had been in power for over 20 years before the name change, it isn't like the military just came out of nowhere and decided to change the name. And it isnt like they changed it to some stupid random name either, the region had been known as Myanmar to the people for centuries. It would be like if the British military changed the United Kingdom's name to the "Union of Britain". MethMan47 (talk) 22:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I posted the following to Wikipedia:Request for Comment/Myanmar vs Burma , but I am not sure that many people have looked there, since discussion continues here.

In previous discussions, there have been claims that "Burma" is more common in the "English-speaking world", including the US, UK, etc. I just don't see it, and those claims seem like so much empty rhetoric. From my perspective, it is patently obvious that the most commonly used name in the English-speaking world is "Myanmar". Just spending a few minutes looking for links to major well-known international organizations, I found exclusive usage of "Myanmar":

• United Nations — link
• International Organization for Standardization — link
• Universal Postal Union — link
• International Telecommunication Union — link
• International Olympic Committee — link
• FIFA — link

Also, the Associated Press uses "Myanmar" exclusively. My local newspaper uses AP, and I have been looking for any usage of "Burma" these past few weeks, with none to be seen. I have been paying attention to CNN to see what they would use, and every instance of on-screen graphics I observed showed "Myanmar" alone. Sometimes the news reporter might say "formerly Burma" etc., but the preference for "Myanmar" was clear. The top of Google News - World (link) at 16:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC) says "Myanmar Mourns Victims of Cyclone" with links to the New York Times [88] (no mention of "Burma"), Reuters [89] (one mention of "former Burma", all other refs to "Myanmar"), International Herald Tribune [90] (no mention of "Burma"), and CNN [91] (no mention of "Burma"). The Washington Post [92]] does use Burma, but that was the only link from that set to do so. I truly cannot see any NPOV way to claim that "Burma" is a better article name than "Myanmar" for Wikipedia. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia says Burma, the SS Free's wiki says Burma, Google says Burma (Myanmar), Firefox and SeaMonkey's spell check programs say Myanmar is not a word. The general does not have the authority to change the name of a country, the elected official is the only one that does, with the approval of the senate (or other senate-like power that is stated in the constitution).--4.244.36.208 (talk) 23:52, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Umm... let me contradict you. Uncyclopedia says Myanmar, SS Free's wiki is a dead link, and Google says Myanmar (Burma) (on the map version, anyway; the searches just produce more results for Myanmar than Burma). I wouldn't have responded, but most of what you said was inaccurate. -BaronGrackle (talk) 01:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] missing it

Some of you are missing the good thing about Burma, they were good in World War II, I highly doubt that the fake leaders of Myanmar (aka: generals since they weren't elected) would be good in World War II if they were around, they would probably help the Nazis since they commit crimes against humanity just like fascists do.--4.244.36.208 (talk) 23:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

This may well all be true (though it is an 'argument contrary to fact,' and simple speculation to boot). That doesn't change the fact that they are in control of the country at this point, and have officially renamed it, just as the Nazis renamed the government of their country, etc., etc. Doesn't acknowledging that the current (admittedly, repressive) government has renamed the country actually serve to distance them from what you claim is the positive history associated with "Burma?" And doesn't acknowledging their name change make it easier to distinguish the changes they've brought to the country? Treating evil as though it doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. Indeed, there's a good argument to be made that the opposite result is more common. 71.9.8.150 (talk) 00:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

They haven't officially renamed anything because they are an illegitimate regime. They have no authority to "officially' do anything. The name of the country is still Burma. JohnMGarrison (talk) 03:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

As much as I'd like to agree with this statement and I despise the military junta, the US has an embassy from the military government of the country (http://www.mewashingtondc.com/). There's an embassy in London, one in Paris, one in Tokyo, one in Berlin, and so on. The military government controls the seat at the UN. They may be hopelessly corrupt and totally incapable of providing for their people but they are the internationally recognized government of the country. If they were not, there would be no embassies. Those embassies often lack actual ambassadors, of course. For example, the US refuses to have an ambassador to the country in protest. To say that "normal" relations exist would be a joke, but they do exist. (q.v. [93])Somedumbyankee (talk) 04:18, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The US has an embassy in Rangoon, Burma. Here is a link to their official webpage.[94]Angstriddenyouth (talk) 07:15, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Listen, it boils down to this. Wikipedia operates a NPOV policy. Any assumption that a military junta is any less legitimate than a democratically elected government or any other form of government is a POV that is unsuitable for Wikipedia. It is generally accepted that the junta have political control over the country, and this is the closest thing to an official authority on the country's name that there is. The US can call it whatever they like but unless they have an overwhelming influence over the English language usage, it's irrelevant. Indeed, the UN disagrees with them, just like on some other recent issues. BigBlueFish (talk) 08:31, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Unilaterally changing the name to Myanmar and ignoring the commonly used name Burma is hardly establishing a Neutral Point of View (NPOV). Here are a couple of quotes from the Wikipedia Naming Conventions[[95]]:

• "Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize." (The name most recognised throughout the English speaking world is Burma. It may be that a majority the American Media prefer to use Myanmar, but, as Morrissey once said: "America is not the World." I am from the UK where the name Burma is used universally by the Government, all major news organisations and NGOs and, for that matter, the people.)
• "Editors are strongly discouraged from editing for the sole purpose of changing one controversial name to another. If an article name has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should remain." (Bearing this in mind, I cannot see how the recent change by a single editor to change Burma to Myanmar can be justified.) - Angstriddenyouth (talk) 10:52, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The Iraq and weapons of mass destruction thing is completely different in my opinion, it is different in the fact that Burma has leaders that the people chose and despite the fact that they don't really have any power, they are still in charge of everything.

The leaders "that the people chose" are under house arrest, or in prison, and aren't in charge of anything. It is the military Junta, which was never chosen by anyone, which has the power. Angstriddenyouth (talk) 22:49, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Besides regimes like this one rarely last any long. In Germany, that was different because the Nazis were elected into office (which is something that people learned was a bad thing and never happened after that [other than Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War). We own Iraq, we went in, kicked there asses and seized there land and government, we then tried to make Iraq a democracy but the terrorists kept blowing up the voting booths (with the people in them just for fun since there gay terrorists).--4.244.36.127 (talk) 11:52, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Time for mediation/arbitration?

This debate is not going to be concluded until an enforceable decision is handed down from on high. Since there are many archives of debates on this subject, and at least one RFC, it is time to move this up a step in the dispute resolution procedure. I honestly don't think formal mediation is going to solve this, but perhaps we can come to an agreement where the name is locked for several months at a time. If we can't come to an agreement, I think this content issue should be moved up to the Arbitration Committee. It is just too destructive to allow it to continue.

Does anybody agree that we should escalate this problem on the DR procedure?--Burzum (talk) 10:43, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

There's an active Wikipedia:Request for Comment/Myanmar vs Burma in process.Somedumbyankee (talk) 14:13, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Der Spiegel changes back to "Burma."

I was interested to read that Der Spiegel (Europe's biggest and most influential weekly magazine)[[96]] last year reverted from using Myanmar to Burma. The link is here.[97] (In German.) It is a fact that most European countries use the original name. Right now I am in Italy where the press universally use "Birmania." In case you didn't guess, that's Italian for "Burma." Not "Myanmar."Angstriddenyouth (talk) 14:37, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Something serious (and something seriously irrelevant)

YouTube has about 30,000 hits for Burma, 34,000 hits for Myanmar. Might actually be a better reflection of "common usage" since it doesn't have the AP bias.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyzQItUhXyw&feature=related

At 1:00 in (uses "Burma"). This is a semi-famous 1990's US TV series. More "popular culture" than "common usage" and isn't current, but I can't resist.Somedumbyankee (talk) 01:17, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Entertaining, but the United Kingdom is also called England! BigBlueFish (talk) 09:14, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

They spelled Israel wrong too, and they used a country in Africa by both its colonial name and its current name. I would not take it as a reliable source.Somedumbyankee (talk) 05:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

They didn't call the United Kingdom, "England", they called England, "England", and Scotland, "Scotland", which is perfectly legitimate, considering both countries maintain their seperate identities, whilst still being parts of a Union. What I liked, though, was that they also included "Tibet" in the list of countries. But don't get me started on that one. - Angstriddenyouth (talk) 22:03, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

And Britain, and Great Britain! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk • contribs) 10:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The UK is not called England, neither is it called Britain or Great Britain. England is a region of the United Kingdom, as are Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Great Britain includes England, Scotland and Wales but not Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom is a state, Great Britain is an Island and England is a part of the island of Great Britain. See United Kingdom, Great Britain and England (also Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland). Alun (talk) 10:36, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

You muppet we were discussing vernacular, not the concise definition. Someone travelling to Birmingham could just as correctly say they are travelling to the UK as they could say England. --Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (talk) 10:52, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I find the fact that somebody would stoop so low as to harass somebody for there ethnicity and nationality. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a personal union of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland (Irish Civil War), and the Munster Republic (formerly). As well as a few minor states that came and went during the Irish Civil War, which involved like 18 Irish countries, most of which surrendered shortly after declaring war. Also Cornwall (aka: Kingdom of Cornwall) was and will be a country in the UK in the future. England took them over in the 16th century and they have been resisting English rule ever since.--4.244.36.20 (talk) 11:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

...and don't forget Berwick upon Tweed (as the Russians did) ;-) István (talk) 20:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

More uses in popular culture: the first Harry Potter movie uses Burma in the visit to the zoo scene (joy of having cousins). I've never read the books, don't know what's used there. The West Wing, on the other hand, uses Myanmar in season three. Neither quibbles about using the other name. Somedumbyankee (talk) 06:14, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] it is Burma

REFERENCES: SS Free - Wikipedia reliable reference, SS Free's wiki, Transformers wiki, Uncyclopedia, Yahoo! - Wikipedia reliable reference, Catholic Encyclopedia, Spartacus, AboutUs.org - Wikipedia reliable reference, Classic Encyclopedia, InfoPlease.com, Making History - The Calm & The Storm, Central Intelligence Agency - Wikipedia reliable source, United States government - Wikipedia reliable source, State.gov - Wikipedia reliable source, [98], [99], [100], [101], [102], [103], [104], [105], [106], and about a million others. Myanmar references: 0.--4.244.36.79 (talk) 18:01, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't have commented on your extensive list of links here, many of which are U.S. government and many of which are Burma freedom protesters (both of which we acknowledge as using "Burma"), but I felt I had to comment on some of these links because they further the "Myanmar" argument:

• SS Free’s wiki– A video game wiki? The Burma article was made May 19. Note there is no India article, nor many other nations.
• Transformers wiki- Burma article made March 22. Anyway, I’d presume that references to the country in Transformers would be pre-1989, so of course it would be Burma.
• Uncyclopedia- Article was redirected to Burma on May 23 (today), creating a double redirect. I corrected it; thanks for the heads-up. If you decide later to move the article at Wikitravel, try to avoid a double redirect.
• Yahoo- To your credit, you've proven to me that Yahoo! is fairly divided, when I'd previously thought it was all-Myanmar. Your link goes to Yahoo quoting the CIA World Factbook. That sidebar is where you found “World Factbook”. If you instead click on Encyclopedia or Dictionary, you’ll find Myanmar. Also, to my surprise, Yahoo! Maps uses “Burma (Myanmar)”. I’ll yield that Yahoo! Maps uses Burma… however, would the Burmese-namers here say that Myanmar is placed in parenthesis as a clarification to us English-speakers? :-) If not, I’d suggest that argument be dropped elsewhere for when we see “Myanmar (Burma)”… such as Google Maps.
• Spartacus- The information on this site ends with World War II.
• AboutUs.org- Yielded. However, again I see the use of “Burma (Myanmar)”. And again, as I question whether Myanmar is really used as a translation for helping English-speakers understand which country is being talked about (or if the parentheses names are for political reasons), the same question comes up for cases of "Myanmar (Burma)".
• Free Burma Coalition (links 102 and 103 in your list)- Well, it looks like even an organization called the “Free Burma Coalition” uses “Burma/Myanmar” for our sake. And they’d better, because their map uses the word “Myanmar”.
• Lonelyplanet.com (link 106 in your list)- This last link actually uses Myanmar exclusively. I’m surprised you included it. -BaronGrackle (talk) 19:03, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the previous editor probably just did a search for "Burma" sources and posted them up without checking them, BaronGrackle, you probably spent more time looking at them than they did... Often a page will come up in search for "Burma", but actually use "Myanmar" (or a combination), and vice-versa. The point they make is a good one, though. Burma is still commonly used by many authoritative sources. (And it's in Transformers too!) - Angstriddenyouth (talk) 20:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... perhaps there are more to these links than meets the eye. -BaronGrackle (talk) 20:28, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Can we make it clear that no isolated list of sources using one name or the other is any argument at all? It has been shown quite clearly that there are notable reliable sources using both. BigBlueFish (talk) 20:38, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Inaccuracies perpetuated as history."

An interesting quote from Gustaff Houtman, who has been quoted previously on both sides of the naming debate, and is one of the World's foremost authorites on Burma: "The army is caught up in a network of lies of their own making. They tolerate no dissent and have silenced intellectual life. Instead of holding them to account, it is disappointing to see how inaccuracies are being perpetuated as history, sometimes even by reputable, well-meaning academics."

Full interview here.[107] Angstriddenyouth (talk) 22:08, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting interview. The thing about Burma is that it is not a well-studied country and has never been one. A bit of an afterthought during the Raj, and almost forgotten today until the events of last Fall, it is quite easy to reinvent history. Even here we see the argument presented as fact that Burma is a name imposed on the country by the British while Myanmar is its historical name. This is patently untrue, of course, because the country hardly ever bothered to go by any name, was rarely united as a single whole, and Myanmar historically refers to the dominant ethnic group rather than to the country. --Regents Park (moult with my mallards) 21:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Voting

I can't be bothered getting into what seems to be an endless discussion, but I'm more than happy to vote in polls so give me a yell when one comes up. I am pro Burma, that is what the country has always been called and still is. I don't give a crap what some junta says. --Doctor Bojangles (talk) 12:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Understand that this attitude is why Wikipedia is not a democracy. Here we prefer to reach a consensus through intelligent discussion rather than count all the single-minded individuals with no interest in any other ideas but their own, especially if it is based on political reasoning such as the above which frankly has no place in the editorial methodology of a serious encyclopedia. BigBlueFish (talk) 20:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My opinion

My opinion is that the article should be called "Burma" because otherwise the Monty Python "Penguin on the Television" sketch will make no sense.

That's just my opinion; do with it what you will. --Captain Infinity (talk) 19:20, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

LOL! Sorry, but calling it Myanmar won't alter the hilarity of the brilliant Python. Rather, the article will still mention that it used to be called Burma and people will be able to work out that that was when the sketch was. Nice try though ;) Deamon138 (talk) 00:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Who matters in this debate?

It seems that the people whose opinions should matter most in this debate have largely been ignored - those from Myanmar.

Live for any length of time in 'Myanmar' and you will realise how stupid it is to call the country 'Burma'.

Those in favour of 'Burma' may have their own agenda, and many exiled groups and politicians want to change the name back to what it was called - the name of the country when they used to live there, or when their opinions on the issue were polemicised (during the 1988 popular uprising, and its brutal supression by the army). Some Westerners and journalists continue to use the term 'Burma' (like George W. Bush), because it's now become a sticking point to emphasise that the name change was not subject to a democratic vote. It's been politicised, in other words. But my point is simply this - the debate does not consider the opinions of the people who matter, the people of Myanmar. Just because an undemocratic military government changed the name of the country, does not mean that the people living under that government automatically hate the decision. In fact, this remains one of the few things that people in Myanmar actually agree with. Anyone who tries to use the name 'Burma' in Myanmar will soon feel like an idiot.

And there is a long history of its usage to suggest why the name is more acceptable among the people. For one thing, as another 'Burmese' poster mentioned above, the country is composed of many ethnicities, and the name Burma was adopted and popularised under British colonial rule. The name was borrowed from the country's main ethnic race - the Burmar. Calling the country Burma is offensive to those who are not 'Burmese', and thus belong to one (or many of) the other main national ethnicities - Shan, Karen, Mon, Arakan, Kachin or Chin people.

An earlier 'expat' poster also explained that it is mainly the older generation who use the term 'Burma'. I'd like to concur with that statement, but add that it's mostly confined to those elderly people who *have lived outide the country for many years* who continue using 'Burma' rather than 'Myanmar'. There are no obvious means to substantiate the popularity of the name change in the country, as their are no democratic, polling or public opinion institutions at our disposal.

I would urge those interested in this debate, before they add any more remarks, to consider some or all of the following suggestions - 1) seek advice from a range of people who were bought up in the country, and/or speak one of the native languages, like Burmese (and not just those over the age of 50, who are ethnic Burmese expats); 2) research the history of the country; 3) consider the ethnic composition of the nation; and 4) speak to anyone who has visited the country in the past 20 years.

Many of those with strong opinions seem to base their arguments on faulty logic, erroneous comparisons and unsubstantiated knowledge of the country. I urge you, PLEASE reconsider posting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.57.139.246 (talk) 09:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you don't make much sense. You say that Burma is offensive to the non-Burmese because it refers to the main ethnic group but don't seem to know that Myanmar is the name used to refer to the main ethnic group inside Burma. The majority of Shan, Karen, Mon, Arakan, Kachin, or Chin people don't like the name Myanmar because of the ethnic hegemony implied in the name. You say, research the history of the country but don't seem to know that the country was never called Myanmar except during a brief period at the time of Mingdon Min and Thibaw when they started referring to their kingdom as the kingdom of the Myanmar people. At that time, the Ava kingdom was largely confined to the Burmese heartland which is essentially Myanmar in nature (no Chin, no Arakanese, no Karen, tributary Shan and Kachin). You say consider the ethnic composition of the nation. Well it is composed of many ethnic groups, not just the Myanmar ethnic group. Whatever the country is called after the junta goes, it is unlikely that the nation will survive if it retains the name Myanmar because that would be not be PC with the other ethnic groups. You say speak to anyone who has visited the country in the past 20 years. Anyone with more than a superficial relationship with Burma knows that both names are used. You may encounter more uses of Myanmar but think about the implications of being a Burmese in contact with a foreigner and using a name that is associated with the NLD. The Karen, who you are unlikely to meet when in Burma, use Burma almost exclusively. Travel in the Kachin hills (take a trip outside Myitkyina for example) and see what happens if you insist that the country should be called Myanmar rather than Burma. --Regents Park (roll amongst the roses) 10:43, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

i think the first post has some better points in this mini argument...

- Burma used to refer to the Burmese. - Karen people are simply everywhere in Myanmar, as are the other ethncities, and don't just reside in their own states. Since, over the past two years, those living in the refugee camps in Thailand have been given the go ahead to leave for better countries in the west, you will find thousands of Karens all over the developed world now. Thirdly - there is no ethnic group called Myanmar. I would say that, politically speaking, there is an issue with Myanmar because it is a Burmese word. Lastly - i'd just like to emphasise that it's not really a political issue at all in the country. people everywhere just call it Myanmar.

i personally think there should be the right of ethnic groups to make their own countries, and then the country's name will have to change for sure —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.8.47.191 (talk) 13:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I thought Burma changed its name to Myanmar in 1989. So we should respect that and call it Myanmar.

We wouldn't call the USA the "British colony of America", therefore we shouldn't call Myanmar "Burma". Names change therefore we should jeep up to date. Ijanderson977 (talk) 16:05, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I can't even believe this is being debated. The country is Myanmar: fact. There is no debate. That is how it is. Have Burma redirect to Myanmar has yes, those of us with a systematic bias will use that term, but the page should be named Myanmar. Period. Hooper (talk) 21:35, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The End?

I'd just like to say firstly that I'm fairly new to this kind of thing, so I was wondering, when will it end? I mean either we stick with Burma, move to Myanmar, or have two articles. Now either we have this discussion and we all agree (which seems unlikely) or this discussion just keeps on going. What policies are there governing that? When is it acceptable to acknowledge the fact that we might be getting nowhere and need to try a different tact to resolve this? And what different tact is there? Vote/Poll/what? My views should be somewhere above but just in case: I'd be most happy I reckon with two articles, but wouldn't mind renaming the current one to Myanmar. As long as there's a Myanmar one I'm happy. But when will it end, with a result either way? Deamon138 (talk) 22:04, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

In the end we will stick with the most common, sensible name, which is Burma. --Doctor Bojangles (talk) 22:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

There appear to be many people who disagree that Burma is the most common name and/or the most sensible name. At any rate, the RfC appears to have gone on for its two weeks, but no action has been taken. I'll toss something at the noticeboard.Somedumbyankee (talk) 22:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Doctor Bojangles, I was basically asking for people to describe what happens next in this seemingly eternal process. Note I said, "But when will it end, WITH A RESULT EITHER WAY?" BTW Somedumbyankee, I like your previous edit summary! Deamon138 (talk) 00:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I suppose this is hardly surprising. As with most controversial discussions on Wikipedia, especially ones involving significant use of unencyclopedic arguments, the discussion dies out when people get fed up of discussing or arguing. I doubt this argument will be fully resolved until either a regime change radically changes the circumstances or enough time has passed for Myanmar to become the prevailing usage. While I doubt that any body is likely to change its stance from pro-Myanmar to pro-Burma, as influences like the AP make the name Myanmar more widespread in common parlance, more and more sources may follow. We will see though. BigBlueFish (talk) 21:40, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't fret it hasn't completely died down. Some are still involved. Over at Wikipedia:Request for Comment/Myanmar vs Burma#Steps to take for resolution, Somedumbyankee has proposed a WP:MEDCAB to solve this. Have a look over there. Deamon138 (talk) 22:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Alot of Burma pushers have mentioned that Burma is more commonly used (thus Wikipedia should use it). Does this mean, if the United States is (or becomes) more commonly known as America, we should move that article too? GoodDay (talk) 22:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually yes. I may be a "Myanmar pusher" but WP:NCGN says to use the more common name, "When a widely accepted English name, in a modern context, exists for a place, we should use it." SO it would be called America if that was the case. However, where the "Burma pushers" are wrong is that Burma is not more commonly used, it seems about 50-50 between the two. The same policy says if this is the case, we use the official name which is Myanmar. However, why have you posted that message under this heading? This heading isn't intended for discussing Burma v Myanmar reasons, just the process of this discussion itself. Deamon138 (talk) 22:20, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know. Feel free to move my posting to the proper place. GoodDay (talk) 22:23, 8 June 2008 (UTC)