Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
territory as national land, and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house
arrest. SLORC also gave Burma its new name, Myanmar, and
changed Rangoon into Yangon, the Irrawaddy into the Ayeyarwaddy.
And thus practically no one in the Western world knows what those
new names refer to.
It’s true. Ask ten of your friends what and where Myanmar is, and
I would wager nine would not know. But if you said Burma, they
would say, “Oh, Burma!”—vaguely remembered in the way we say,
“Oh, Barbara—how is she doing?” Like the Burmese dissenters who
disappeared, the country formerly calling itself Burma is invisible to
most of the Western world, an illusion. Well, I still call it Burma, so
does the U.S. government. I’ve never been able to call it the other,
even though more and more people do, like the newspapers and TV
networks that have succumbed to the names, as if to say, “This is the
new reality, now get over it.” But to me, “Myanmar” sounds sneaky,
Myanmar, like the twitchy miao-miao of a cat before it pounces on a
trapped mouse.
A few years ago, with the help of a public relations firm, SLORC
changed its own name in order to appear friendlier. As a matter of
fact, it was an image-consulting company based in Washington,
D.C.—yes, shameful, isn’t it? State Peace and Development Council—
SPDC—that’s how they renamed themselves. But some find it too
hard to say four syllables when one does nicely. “SLORC” rolls off
the tongue more easily and sounds more fitting, suggesting a seman­
tic and onomatopoetic accuracy. Some have noted that the sibilant-
liquid combination is also the beginning of like-minded words: sly,
slippery, slayers. They say it is impossible to keep up with shifting
and shifty terminologies. And so SLORC is what they still call it.
Not so with people in Burma, and especially journalists. It does
not behoove them to be out of fashion with terminology. Most of
Asia has adapted to the new names. Meanwhile, some Westerners
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