Burma/Myanmar is in the news these days, and the Herald-Leader has grappled with which name to use.
Institutions that use the name “Myanmar” include The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Washington bureau of The McClatchy Company, owner of the Herald-Leader. These sources use phrases such as “Myanmar, formerly known as Burma” or “Myanmar, also known as Burma.” The United Nations also includes “Myanmar” as a member state, not Burma. The Web site of Myanmar’s embassy in Washington includes this statement: “Anyhow, since the United Nations has recognized Myanmar by her original name, it is the obligation of all the U.N. member countries to accept it, whether they approve it or not.”
On the other hand, “Burma” is the term used by the U.S. government — including President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Department of State — and the BBC. It is also used by the protesting Buddhist monks who are the focus of much of the current news.
The European Union recognizes an official name of “Union of Myanmar” but almost always uses “Burma/Myanmar” on Web sites discussing relations with the country.
The Herald-Leader has a traditional principle of calling people by the names they apply to themselves. That’s why we use “African-American” if that is a source’s stated preference, even though our default term is “black” for groups or for individual people whose preference isn’t known, and this is why our default term is “gay,” not “homosexual.” (On the other hand, even though many anti-abortionists call themselves “pro-life,” we do not use that label; our stylebook notes that “it implies the other side is inherently anti-life, which can be debated.”) The Herald-Leader is also leading the way as part of the small minority of newspapers that bother to apply accent marks such as é and ñ, in an effort to correctly spell the names of our increasingly multicultural readership.
It’s hard to apply the principle of “what do the people call themselves” with regard to Burma/Myanmar, since a significant portion of the country’s common populace and exiles are at odds with its military government. Here’s some background from The CIA World Factbook: “Since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the U.S. government did not adopt the name.”
Herald-Leader Editor Linda Austin, Managing Editor Tom Eblen and I conferred and decided to go with Burma as our default. This means a bit of extra work for our copy editors, who must remember to change the wording in wire stories. But in addition to being part of the world of journalism, the Herald-Leader is part of the United States, and it seems strange that so many newspapers are in effect bypassing their own government to establish relations with an unrecognized regime.
Brian Throckmorton
Copy Chief
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