Talk:Irrawaddy Delta

Myanmar Mid‑importance

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Delta Relief

Recently I created a profile of the Irrawaddy Delta from Henzhada to the (main) river mouth. It is uploaded here. It might be an option to include such an image to show how flat the delta actually is. Cheers, Pim Rijkee (talk) 22:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to move page to Ayeyarwady Delta

Hi,

I've contributed to the Ayeyarwady River article, and have come across the Irrawaddy delta river delta article quite a few times. I noticed though, the article is called Irrawaddy Delta, whereas the main river article uses Ayeyarwady, as does the article about the division (check it here). Below, I will explain why I think we should change the delta article to Ayeyarwady Delta.

'In 1988 General Saw Maung staged a coup d'état and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). SLORC changed the country's official English name from the 'Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma' to the 'Union of Myanmar' in 1989.' Quote from the Wikipedia article on the history of Myanmar, 1962 - present.

The name of the country however wasn't the only name they changed. A lot of the then usual colonial names were replaced by their original (pre-colonial) Romanised names. On June 19, 1989 the following names, among others, were changed: "Names of Irrawaddy, Magwe, Pegu, Rangoon, and Tenasserim divisions and Arakan, Karen, and Karenni states changed to Ayeyarwady, Magway, Bago, Yangon, Tanintharyi, Rakhine, Kayin, and Kayah, respectively. Name of national capital changed from Rangoon to Yangon."^[1]A more complete list can be found here.

The country is now known (and recognised by the UN^[2]) as Myanmar (although Wikipedia still uses Burma - I don't agree with that, but that's another discussion). We use the 'new' spelling for the capital. We should switch to the 'new' name for the river too. This has already happened at the main river article, and I've seen no negative response to this. Of course, we still redirect from Irrawaddy and we can name it as the previous, colonial name. Burmese speakers will probably tell us Ayeyarwady is a better transcription than Irrawaddy.

I know more people seem to know the name Irrawaddy, but reliable sources seem to disagree. The NY Times has switched to Ayeyarwady for quite a few years, but the BBC only returns results on ‘Irrawaddy‘, as you can see here. The Washington Post only lists Irrawaddy, but that’s because their search results refer mainly to the News magazine and the river dolphin..

Now two Wikipedia articles about the same river use a different name for it. I'd say, change the title of the delta article to Ayeyarwady delta, also for the sake of uniformity.

For some more on the etymology of the name Ayeyarwady, check the river article, etymology section.

I do not speak Burmese though (As a matter of fact, I’ve never heard someone speak it) so I'd like to hear other people's opinions on this. Again, if someone has good arguments to keep Irrawaddy, I don’t have a problem with keeping the name. But that would mean, the other 2 articles should be moved too. Cheers, Pim Rijkee (talk) 17:30, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think you might want to request a move at WP:RM. I'm on record at wikipedia for disliking the new names in some instances (I think Burma is more recognizable than Myanmar, Rangoon over Yangon, but think that Pyin U Lwin is better than Maymyo). I'm not sure about the river though. Wikipedia does have a strong preference for commonly used names in the English language over official or even local names and, IMO, Irrawaddy is definitely more common than Ayeyarwady (I am surprised that the NYT uses Ayeyarwady over Irrawaddy and even more surprised that I haven't noticed). It is the name of the river dolphin, it is the name of the newsmagazine, and probably more used than the new official name. I am no Burmese language expert (I can get by in Burma but somewhat at the same level as I can get by with my French in Paris - everyone probably thinks I'm some sort of idiot!) but agree that Ayeyarwady is closer to the Burmese, but that's not really what we should be looking at on the English wikipedia. --RegentsPark (sticks and stones) 08:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, you're wrong about The New York Times. I did a search of their site and they still use Irrawaddy. Only three articles use Ayeyarwady, of which only one is recent. --RegentsPark (sticks and stones) 08:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Saw my mistake on the NY Times claim, don't know what happened there. I can see your point and I actually agree with using the common name, but that would mean we will have to move the Ayeyarwady river article + the division article. Because I think we all agree that using different names is not right. Pim Rijkee (talk) 14:31, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ http://www.statoids.com/umm.html
^ http://www.un.org/en/members/index.shtml List of UN members

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[1] ttp://www.statoids.com/umm.html

[2] ttp://www.un.org/en/members/index.shtml List of UN members

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