About Burmese Names
Burmese names can be difficult to pronounce for the uninitiated, but they are actually quite easy to understand. There are no family names in Burmese, a person’s name is just his or her name, although sometimes people adopt part of their parents’ name. The father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was General Aung San, the hero of Burma’s Independence movement of the 1940s, and she incorporated part of his name into her own name from birth.
Burmese is a tonal language with three possible tones, giving one word three slightly different pronunciations with often widely different meanings. Pronouncing Burmese names is easy if you remember a few basic things. ‘Su’ is soo, ‘Kyi’ is pronounced chee, ‘Aung’ is ong, Gyi is gee, ‘Kyaw’ is jaw, ‘Eine’ is ine, ‘Phyo’ is pyo, ‘Mie’ is me, and Htwe is tway (the ‘H’ is aspirated).
Therefore, Aung San Suu Kyi is pronounced “ong san soo chee,”
and Kyaw Kyaw Htwe is pronounced “jaw jaw t-way.”
Nicknames, or pen names, are often used, so it is not unlikely that someone you know by one name actually has another. Zargana, which means “pliers,” or as some people say “tweezers,” is the popular name for Maung Thura, the famous comedian. He is a trained dentist, so it is an apt stage name for his comedic endeavors. Monks and nuns often have ancient Pali names, religious order names the clergy and the lay community calls them, even though their family still calls them by their birth names.
The Burmese language also has a straightforward category of honorifics, words you place before a person’s name to signify their social standing. “U” (pronounced “Oo”) means uncle, a term of respect for the elderly or someone who has achieved a position of prominence or respect (like “sir”). “Daw” means aunt. Many people refer to Aung San Suu Kyi as “Daw Suu.” “Maung” means older brother, and “Ma” is older sister, as in Ma Su Su Nway, and “Ko”means younger brother.
Names in other ethnic languages in Burma are generally easy to discern from Burmese, especially Kachin, Shan, Karen, Mon, and other major dialects.