Myanmar has so many peculiarities that we could write thousands of articles on the subject. Today we are going to talk about Burmese names. One of the most striking aspects of this great Asian country is that there are no surnames, nor does one’s name change upon marriage. The name is decided based on the day of the week the baby is born and, as a general rule, they have meanings related to skills or nature.
In Myanmar, it is very important to be prepared for the arrival of the new family member, and it is essential to be clear about what the name will be. Here’s the interesting part. In Western culture, we are accustomed to thinking of the future child’s name with only 2 options, depending on whether it is a boy or a girl. In Myanmar, up to 14 different names can be considered before knowing whether it is a boy or a girl.
Table of baby names according to the day of the week of their birth
Each day of the week has a different initial. Thus, our guideline for choosing a Burmese name would be as follows:
| Day | Name Initial | Examples |
| Monday (တနင်္လာ) | က (ka), ခ (hka), ဂ (ga), ဃ (ga), င (nga) | Kay, Khin, Nge |
| Tuesday (အင်္ဂါ) | စ (sa), ဆ (hsa), ဇ (za), ဈ (za), ည (nya) | Sanda, Swe, Zeya |
| Wednesday (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး) | လ (la), ဝ (wa) | Wai, War, Luu |
| Rahu (ရာဟု) | ယ (ya), ရ (ya, ra) | Ye, Yan, Shwe, Yu |
| Thursday (ကြာသာပတေး) | ပ (pa), ဖ (hpa), ဗ (ba), ဘ (ba), မ (ma) | Phyu, Myaing, Myint |
| Friday (သောကြာ) | သ (tha), ဟ (ha) | Thida, Thanda, Haymar |
| Saturday (စနေ) | တ (ta), ထ (hta), ဒ (da), ဓ (da), န (na) | Nanda, Nyein, Htoo |
| Sunday (တနင်္ဂနွေ) | အ (a) | Aye, Ei, Ohn |
Why are there 8 days of the week in Myanmar?
You will have noticed the detail, right? In Myanmar there are 8 days of the week linked to 8 cardinal points. For this reason, Wednesday is divided into 2: Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon. The symbolism of each of the days would be as follows:
| Day | Direction | Burmese | Symbol |
| Sunday | Northeast | Taninganwe (တနင်္ဂနွေ) | Garuda (ဂဠုန်) |
| Monday | East | Taninla (တနင်္လာ) | Tiger (ကျား) |
| Tuesday | Southeast | Inga (အင်္ဂါ) | Lion (ခြင်္သေ့) |
| Wednesday A.M. | South | Boddahu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး) | Elephant with tusks (ဆင်) |
| Wednesday P.M. (Rahu) | Northwest | Rahu (ရာဟု) | Elephant without tusks (ဟိုင်း) |
| Thursday | West | Kyathabade (ကြာသပတေး) | Rat (ကြွက်) |
| Friday | North | Thaukkya (သောကြာ) | Pig (ပူး) |
| Saturday | Southwest | Sanay (စနေ) | Naga (နဂါး) |
If you know what day and time of the week you were born, what Burmese name would you choose?
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