I'm wondering if anyone could tell me whether the people of Burma and/or
their legitimate government prefer the name "Myanmar" to "Burma". By
"legitimate government", I mean the one the people of Burma actually
elected, and not the SLORC thugs who are holding the nation and their
government captive and who announced the "official" name change.
I don't consider anything SLORC says or does to be any more "official" than
the proclamations of the Bloods or the Crips in Los Angeles, but my opinion
isn't relevant when it comes to the naming of Unicode characters. If the
people of Burma prefer the new name, there's no issue, and I'd like to know
it so that I can call them by the name they prefer. If the name "Myanmar" is
a SLORC logo, though, I would feel bad if the Burmese had to endure it
forevermore as a descriptor of their writing system in the UCS. (As in
U+1000 MYANMAR LETTER KA)
Of course I realize that the UTC can't put itself in the position of
deciding who is and who isn't a "legitimate" government, so it has to defer
to some international body that will take the heat for that type of
decision. The UTC has enough things to worry about without having to raise
its own army. ;-)
My question then comes down to:
Do the people of Burma prefer the name "Myanmar"?
If so, stop. I'm relieved.
If not,
Is there a provision for changing the character names if the appropriate
international body someday changes the country name?
If so, what is it?
If not, are there any options that would spare the Burmese people this
permanent indignity?
Thanks,
Glen Perkins
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:53 EDT