Place-Names

As mentioned on page 3, the names of many towns and political divisions have changed over the centuries in Burma. For example, Rakhine State used to be known as Arakan, and its capital, Sittwe, was called Akyub when the British controlled the area. Similarly, the town of Dawei on the south coast was known as Tavoy under the British; the storied place of ancient monuments and temples, Bagan, is often spelled Pagan on older maps, and the town of Bago is Pegu on British maps. The renaming trend has only accelerated in the five decades since the military takeover of 1962; for example, these days the Irrawaddy River, Burma’s main artery, is transcribed into our alphabet as Ayeyawaddy; however, as with the name of the country itself, I use the more familiar spelling.