None of this caused much of a fuss until 1989, when the ruling army junta officially changed the name of the country in English to Myanmar (the final “r” was meant to lengthen the vowel, as it would when spoken in the southeast of England, and not be pronounced). The justification offered was that the name “Myanmar” incorporated all the country’s indigenous peoples. This was untrue. Few minorities, if any, would claim that the word historically applied to them. The real reason for the change was that the government of the time was moving in a nativist direction
