Wordorigins.org

Is the country called Burma or Myanmar? And what’s the difference between the two names?

Interestingly, the conflict between the two names is in the English version; there is no such conflict in the Burmese language. The official name of the country in Burmese is Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw, meaning Union of Myanmar (or Myanma), which is often shortened to Myanma Naingngandaw.

Myanmar has always been the official name of the country and the Burmese use this word when they want to be official or literary. But since the 19th century, the Burmese have used the name Bama or Bamar in everyday, colloquial speech. This colloquial usage has been turned into Burma in English. In Burmese, both names coexist without conflict, each being used in its proper place. The ultimate etymology and what the name means is unclear, but both Myanmar and Bama ultimately come from the same root.

In 1989, the military junta that rules the country decided to change the official English version of the name from Burma to Myanmar. At the same time, they changed the official transliteration of several other place names to better reflect their pronunciation in Burmese, one of these being the English name of the capital, which was changed from Rangoon to Yangon. But in protest of the military government, which they considered illegitimate, several Western nations, including the US, Australia, Canada, and Britain, refused to recognize this change and went on calling the country Burma. Some Western news organizations follow the lead of their government and use Burma. Others use Myanmar. And other compromise and use both.

(Sources: BBC News, CIA World Factbook)

Angel comes from the Greek angelos, meaning messenger. The Greek word was used in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures written sometime between the third and first centuries B.C.E., to translate the Hebrew mal’ak. A mal’ak-yehowah is a messenger of Jehovah.

From Greek, the word was borrowed into Latin, becoming angelus, and from Latin into the Germanic languages. Exactly when English picked up the word is uncertain, but it clearly pre-dates the Norman Conquest. The earliest known appearance in English writing is from c.950 in the Lindisfarne Gospels, in Matthew 22:30:

sint suelce englas godes in heofnum
(are like god’s angels in heaven)

There is a famous story that appears in Bede’s The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written c.731 in Latin, about Gregory (c.540-604), who would later become Pope Gregory the Great (590-604). Gregory encountered some English slaves in a market place:

“What is the name of this race?” [said Gregory] “They are called Angles,” he was told. “That is appropriate,” he said, “for they have angelic faces, and it is right that they should become joint-heirs with the angels in heaven.

It doesn’t tell us anything about the origin of the word angel, but it is an interesting example of medieval wordplay.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Doom is a very old word, dating back to the Old English period. But the Old English dom had a differerent meaning for those in medieval England was quite different than its meaning today. It did not refer to fate or the apocalypse back then, rather it meant a law or judgment at trial.

The word appears as early as c.825 in the Vespasian Psalter with the meaning of a statute, decree, or judgment:

Bioð afirred domas ðine from onsiene his.
(Be afraid, in his presence [are] your dooms)

Heaven is a word that dates back to the Old English heofon, heben, or one of various forms that appear in extant texts from that age. Its earliest sense is that of the sky, the firmament in which the stars are placed. From Beowulf, line 1571:

swa of hefene hadre scineð rodores candel
(as from heaven, the candle of the sky clearly shines)

The plural form that is commonly used today also dates back this far. From c.825 in the Vespasian Psalter, from Psalms 8:3:

Ic gesie heofenas werc fingra ðinra
(I see the heavens, work of your fingers)

The sense meaning the abode of God, the afterlife, appears a little bit later. From a translation of the gospel of Matthew, c.1000:

Fader ure þu þe eart on heofene
(Our father, you who are in heaven)

The ultimate origin of heaven is not known. It has cognates in Low German, but the Old High German himil, from which the modern German himmel and the Dutch hemel come, the Gothic himins, and the old Norse himinn are not related.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Hell is another Old English word. It is attested to in the early ninth century, but the word and the concept is undoubtedly older, dating back to pre-Christian Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, Hel was the goddess of the underworld. Her name and the English word for the abode of the dead are undoubtedly related, although exactly how the two senses of the word are related are unknown. Based on cognates in the various Germanic languages, historical linguists have proposed a possible root in Old Germanic, *halja, meaning something along the lines of one who covers or conceals.

The first known appearance of hell in English is c.825 in the Vespasian Psalter, a translation of Psalms 55:15:

Cyme deað ofer hie and astigen hie in helle lifgende.
(Death came over them and they went into a living hell.)

This sense is more of the abode of the dead, rather than the Christian concept as a place of punishment in the afterlife. Modern translations of the Bible tend to use the original Hebrew sheol in this passage to emphasize this difference.

The Christian sense of hell as a place of punishment and torment is attested to a few decades later in King Alfred’s translation of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, c.888:

Swa byrnende swa þæt fyr on þære helle, seo is on þam munte ðe Ætne hatte.
(As burning as the fire in the hell, it is on the mountain that is called Ætna.)

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)