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 things that most catches the attention of the great Asian country is that there are no surnames and the name is not changed once you get married . The name is decided depending on the day of the week in which the baby is born and, as a general rule, 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 very important to be clear about what the name will be. Here is the grace. In the western culture we are used to think the name of the future son with only 2 options, depending if it is a boy or a girl. <In Myanmar up to 14 different names can be raised before knowing if it is a boy or a girl .
Table of names of babies according to the day of the week of their birth
Each day of the week has a different initial. So, our guideline for choosing a Burmese name would be this:
| 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 a week in Myanmar?
You’ve noticed the detail, haven’t you? In Myanmar there are 8 days of the week linked with 8 cardinal points . For this reason Wednesday is divided into 2: Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon. The symbology of each day would be as follows:
| Day | Address | Burmese | symbol |
| Sunday | Northeast | Taninganwe (တနင်္ဂနွေ) | Garuda (ဂဠုန်) |
| Monday | East | Taninla (တနင်္လာ) | Tigre (ကျား) |
| Tuesday | Southwest | Inga (အင်္ဂါ) | León (ခြင်္သေ့) |
| Wednesday A.M. | Sur | Boddahu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး) | Elefante con colmillos (ဆင်) |
| Wednesday P.M. (Rahu) | Northwest | Rahu (ရာဟု) | Elefante sin colmillos (ဟိုင်း) |
| Thursday | West | Kyathabade (ကြာသပတေး) | Rata (ကြွက်) |
| Friday | North | Thaukkya (သောကြာ) | Cerdo (ပူး) |
| Saturday | Southwest | Sanay (စနေ) | Naga (နဂါး) |
If you knew what day and time of the week you were born, what Burmese name would you choose?
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