In several recent stories about the unrest in Myanmar, you may have noticed that U.S. officials still call the Southeastern Asian country Burma.
Just in case you’re wondering, here’s the reasoning behind the use of different names.
In the Burma entry of the CIA’s World Factbook, an invaluable resource, it lists this under the "country name" heading:
conventional long form: Union of Burma
conventional short form: Burma
local long form: Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw (translated by the US Government as Union of Myanma and by the Burmese as Union of Myanmar)
local short form: Myanma Naingngandaw
former: Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma
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
That explains the U.S. government’s position, so let’s see what the Associated Press has to say. The AP stylebook’s entry reads:
Myanmar Use this name for the country and the language. Use Myanmar people or Myanmar for the inhabitants. (Formerly Burma.)
When asked recently about the rationale for the entry, the AP said that "Burma officially changed its name in English to the Union of Myanmar in 1989, bringing the English name into conformity with the pronunciation in the national tongue. Myanmar has been accepted by the United Nations and is increasingly used internationally and in standard references."
So, although the U.S. government doesn’t recognize the change in a formal sense, it’s now the commonly accepted name and is the one we use.
— Michael