Support and speedy close: There is only one possible correct name for the article; and the name is Myanmar. The poll here is irrelevant. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a democracy. I have contributed to this site for five years; I have never been so disappointed. This site will lose its chances of graining professional credibility if users here demonstrate that an article about a nation-state can be completely hijacked by a handful of users canvassing for support with simplistic emotional appeals, ignoring or even falsifying the facts at hand. Users here have been claiming that Myanmar somehow is not an English name. That claim is is factually incorrect. It is an English transliteration. Some have been claiming Burma is the "common" English name. That claim is also factually incorrect. AP, UPI, Reuters, USA Today, the New York Times, and other major U.S. media outlets use Myanmar. In the UK the International Herald Tribune and the Globe and Mail use Myanmar. Britannica [12] uses Myanmar, as does Encarta and scores of other encyclopedias and almanacs. The reason is not that the editors of these publications support the military junta. Myanmar is more frequently used in the English-language media because professional media use standards that Wikipedia is trying to adopt, but failing to implement here. In referring to nation-states, professionally written media use the names that are formally legally adopted by states, and thus used in diplomatic exchanges. Hence, names like Kampuchea and Zaire were used in encyclopedias after their regimes had renamed their nations, regardless of the perceived domestic and international support for these regimes. 172 | Talk 02:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

President Bush called it "Burma" in his State of the Union speech.

President Bush called it "Burma" in his State of the Union speech.

There's a lot of inconsistency. They talk about the City of Derry but County Londonderry; they should use the same name for both.

Should those old Burma Shave signs be retroactively re-designated as "Myanmar Shave" signs?

The battle has started again with another survey.
For me User:172 sums it up best:

I find this discussion to be delightful, rational, kind, thoughtful, and respectful. And I want to thank everyone involved for handling the issue with sensitivity and thoughtfulness. It is a "borderline case" in the true sense of that word: there are good arguments for both sides, and it all seems somewhat balanced.

The article on Köln is actually called Cologne, which is the French name.

Undoubtedly the average man in the street or on the Clapham omnibus or wherever would be more familiar with Burma than Myanmar. I thought the point was that Myanmar was its official name. Köln is the official name too. If we call it Cologne because that's the name most English (and American) people use, that applies equally to Burma.

1st woman: BURMA!
2nd woman: Why did you say, "Burma"?
1st woman: I panicked.

"You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me."
- J. Peterman

I'd buy that Urban Sombrero immediately after reading that. J. Peterman should be a Wikipedia personae of some witty editor.

Imagine the possibilities on the tourism sections of all those exotic country articles, or the articles on Men's adventure gear. And the flashlights. My god J. Peterman could wax poetic on the possibilites of Jimbo's Flashlight...."It was a dark and stormy night in my sopping wet St. Petersburg bungalow, and I'd lost track of exactly which end of the bed taxwoman had leatherbound me too, when I whipped out my trusty Flashlight..."

Myanmar's actual name is this. It is translated as "Union of Myanmar"; in no way can you get "Burma" out of it. So we should use the anglicized form of the country's name, which is Myanmar.

Myanmar and Burma are indeed different Anglicisations of the same name, just as Peking/Beijing, Bombay/Mumbai and (for personal names) Isaac/Yitzhak are.

Myanmar and Burma are indeed different Anglicisations of the same name, just as Peking/Beijing, Bombay/Mumbai and (for personal names) Isaac/Yitzhak are.

You can take that to the extreme and call Joshua = Jesus (which is the same thing) or Issa is Isaac (arabic). But that gets awfully complicated.

It was quite wrong to use the name Myanmar. That's not to say that the motives of those trying to change it to Burma are purely a concern with what is the most popular name in English.

I find these arguments really ignorant and offensive. Particularly coming from English people, who apparently have no sensitivities to the history of the region. You'll be demanding the restoration of Rhodesia and an end to home rule in Ireland next.

Any self respecting resource would call the country by its name in English, Myanmar.

...there is plenty of evidence that people in the country still regard their country to be Burma not Myanmar.

But Kato, it was not the people that changed it democratically, but a dictatorship that did and there is plenty of evidence that people in the country still regard their country to be Burma not Myanmar.