Talk:Bamar people

"related groups" info removed from infobox

For dedicated editors of this page: The "Related Groups" info was removed from all {{Infobox Ethnic group}} infoboxes. Comments may be left on the Ethnic groups talk page. Ling.Nut 16:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Photo

Do you think we could use a picture without a face in shadow? Or better yet, multiple photos? Brutannica (talk) 07:21, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure, if you can find freely licensed photos. Most articles on ethnic groups use several photos of famous people who belong to the ethnicity. Do we have free pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi and U Thant? Who else is a famous Bamar? —Angr 10:35, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Burmese people

I reverted Burmese people back to its original stub and added cleanup suggestions. It was redirecting to Bamar, which I felt was misleading as the latter covers only 68% of a set of people. Please also see Category:Burmese people. 84user (talk) 15:45, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

The point of a stub is that it can be expanded. What can be said about Burmese people that isn't said either here or at Demographics of Burma? +Angr 16:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking of something like the articles French people or German people. Or it could redirect to List of ethnic groups in Burma which could be further expanded. I do not know where it could best lead. 84user (talk) 22:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... Germans is about an ethnic group and so is more parallel to Bamar. But you're right about French people: it's rather pointedly not about an ethnic group and so could serve as a model for Burmese people. The article could discuss who is eligible for Burmese citizenship and residency, summarize the ethnicities, religions and languages in Burma, and discuss Burmese communities abroad. OK, I'm convinced. +Angr 06:20, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

move?

Per WP:COMMONNAME, shouldn't this article be at Burman people or Burmans? — kwami (talk) 08:06, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that is the common name in contemporary academic discussion. It sounds rather old-fashioned to me, though it's probably still used by nonspecialists. But both those links should probably redirect here, or to Burmese people, rather than being redlinks. —Angr (talk) 20:51, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

How about the English pronunciation, then? I'm not finding it in dictionaries. — kwami (talk) 14:12, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The mar is the same as the mar of Myanmar, i.e. /mɑː/ in nonrhotic English (emulating the Burmese), and the spelling pronunciation /mɑr/ in rhotic English. The romanization of both Bamar and Myanmar was obviously devised by a nonrhotic speaker (unsurprisingly given Burma's colonial history). —Angr (talk) 23:28, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's non-rhotic. Hybernator (talk) 05:27, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

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Common name is "Burmans"

The common name for these people is "Burmans". Please take a look at Ngrams. The phrase "Bamar people" is not even found in any books. Attempts to cleanse "Burmans" / "Burman" from this page will be met with resistance. RGloucester — ☎ 17:40, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Google Ngrams isn't a source. "Burmans" is old-fashioned and somewhat offensive. It's like saying "Orientals" instead of "Asians". You need to stop edit-warring now, and you also need to not revert other edits unrelated to the issue at hand. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:54, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It is not "offensive", nor is it "old-fashioned". You have no sources for that utter tosh. It is the standard term, and Ngrams confirms that. No one knows what a "Bamar" is. If it were "offensive", it would not be used by the Encylopaedia Brittanica. RGloucester — ☎ 20:59, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 16 April 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not Moved Mike Cline (talk) 14:23, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

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Bamar people → Burmans – The sources are absolutely clear on this matter. The common name for this ethnic group is "Burmans". Not only is this the most common term, but it is also much more concise. "Bamar" is found extremely rarely in RS, and "Bamar people" is not found at all. This report from Google Ngrams makes that clear. A user above has inserted a canard about the "offensiveness" of "Burmans", but has provided no RS for that assertion. That's because there are none. The common name is "Burmans", and we don't change common usage for the sake of such radicalism. Likewise, the Encylopaedia Brittanica uses "Burmans", and WP:AT tells us to consult other encylopaedias to find titles suited to encyclopaedic register. Let's follow the RS on this, please. The present title fails all the article title criteria.relisted --Mike Cline (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2015 (UTC) RGloucester — ☎ 21:09, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Your graph is heavily skewed by the presence of the unrelated surname Burman, just FYI, and there are significant numbers of modern titles (2000-8) that use Bamar while the 2000-8 Burman(s) graphs contain reprints of 19th century monographs and authors or topics of the surname Burman for pages and pages... common name should not include "all of modern and early modern history", methinks, or else we'd have a lot of bizarre page names. And groups like Evangelical outreach programs, Overseas Burmese websites, linguistics pages and scholarly sources use Bamar. It's not nearly as clear-cut as you think. Also, this was not an "uncontroversial" move and should not have been listed as such when moved the other day and had to be rolled back by the person who moved it. Ogress _smash! 22:44, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It is uncontroversial. "Burmans" (exclude "Burman", if it suits you, as that will eliminate the so-called "surname" issue) overwhelmingly dominates "Bamar people". We follow RS. RGloucester — ☎ 22:53, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

• More sources: A simple Google Books search finds 139,000 results for "Burmans". "Bamar" returns 14,300. "Bamar people" returns 111, the essential equivalent of nil. We follow RS, and the proposed title is also more natural and more concise. RGloucester — ☎ 22:58, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, some "surname" results are still filtering through in that search, so I'll add another. This one reads "the Burmans", which can only refer to the people. 64,000 results are returned for "the Burmans". RGloucester — ☎ 23:03, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

More encyclopaedia sources: the "Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania" uses "Burmans" and "Burman people". RGloucester — ☎ 23:00, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Also, you need to filter out from your "results" usages of "Burman(s)" that are referring generically to the "people of Burma" and not specifically to the Bamar ethnic group. The term "Burman" is ambiguous and has been used to mean both "any citizen of Burma (regardless of ethnicity)" and "the Bamar people".--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 01:25, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

That's not true. "Burmans" does not refer to what are conventionally called "Burmese" in modern English. "Burmans" only refers to the dominant ethnic group in Burma, which is how Britannica and the Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania use it. "Bamar people" doesn't refer to anything in English. It is almost never used. The word is "Burman". Regardless, even if such an ambiguity did exist, it would also apply to "Bamar", given that "Burman" is derived from "Bamar", and that "Bamar" merely means people from "Bama", i.e. Burma, and was and is used in that sense in Burmese. RGloucester — ☎ 01:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Uh, it is true. Look at the results of your Ngram searches above. Did you just look at the number of results and rush here to post, or did you review the results? You can see just by reading the brief summary on the search result pages that many (most?) of the google books results are using "Burman(s)" to refer to what we today call "Burmese", i.e. people of Burma. And your last statement is a prime example of the etymological fallacy. Just because they may have been derived from the same foreign word doesn't mean they have the same meaning in English. We are talking about two separate English words "Burman" and "Bamar", which are not synonymous in English. "Burman" is ambiguous, "Bamar" is not.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 01:50, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Since "Bamar" isn't an English word, that's irrelevant. It doesn't mean anything in English. RS refer to these people are "Burmans", and I dispute your entire assessment of what the sources in the Google Books search are referring to. They are clearly referring to these Burmans, e.g. one sees "The Burmans, a warrior people", "the Burmans made up 60%…", "the Chins and the Burmans"… In fact, I see none that are referring to "Burmese". Zero. RGloucester — ☎ 01:58, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose: As anyone familiar with the matter knows, Burman is now old fashioned and offensive. (Call any "Bamar" Burman, he would simply walk out.) It is only used in historical context. Search Burman or Burmans (with plural "s") if you like, all results on the first page are the surname "Burman", "Bamar" in historical context, "Tibeto-Burman" group, or "Burman" as an adjective of Burma (e.g. Anglo-Burman War). This is further complicated by the fact that "Bama", "Bamar" and "Bamah" are essentially the same word and use interchangeably. Here are the first three results for "Burmans" search.

1. "Deconstructing Developmental Psychology": Erica Burman - 2007
2. "Developments: Child, Image, Nation": Erica Burman
3. Among the Burmans: A Record of Fifteen Years of Work: Henry Park Cochrane - 1904

International media (e.g. BBC) and sources have essentially shifted to "Bamar/Myanmar/Yangon". Bamar is less controversial one of the debate and Burman today is only used in connection with anthropological and linguistic terms (e.g. Tibeto-Burman peoples, or languages). If you search Bamar, it unambiguously refers to the group. Using "Burmans" as a title confuses the reader in that it might refer to the Burmese people (all citizens of Myanmar) or members of a prominent family with surname "Burman", or some companies and entities named after the surname such as "Burmans medical" "Burman coffee" etc . To conclude, the title is imprecise, ambiguous, derogatory and do not meet any of the naming criteria under WP:AT policy. From my years of experience, move wars over Myanmar/Burma articles lead to nothing but a total waste of time of everyone involved. Perhaps, Wiki editors should emphasize on article quality rather than names. 203.81.71.96 (talk) 02:23, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

No. We follow RS. RS use "Burmans". There is no such thing as an "Anglo-Burman War", only the Anglo-Burmese Wars. You're making nonsense up. I added a new search above that totally excludes any surname usages, and it still totally dominates the practically nonexistent "Bamar people". Do you have a source for this "offensive" nonsense? No. That's because no such source exists. RGloucester — ☎ 02:30, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

It's you who is making "nonsense up" and resorting to personal attacks because you can't find a single support in this discussion. Good luck with this proposal. Good bye. 203.81.71.96 (talk) 02:46, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm supported by the sources. You've got no sources for anything you're saying. That's all that anyone needs to know. RGloucester — ☎ 02:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support as per Bamar people being just about the worst possible option.

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Burmans" gets a whopping "About 90,400 results" in books while

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Burmese people" gets "About 29,800 results"

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Myanmas" gets "About 122 results" in books

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Bamar people" gets a relatively pitiful "About 105 results" in books

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Myanmarese people" gets "About 88 results" in books

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Myanma people" gets "About 69 results" in books

Also note Web results:

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Burmans" gets "About 453 results" in the last month

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Burmese people" gets "About 1,250 results" in the last month

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Myanmarese people" gets "4 results" in the last month

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Myanmas" gets "3 results" in the last month.

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Myanma people" gets "1 result"

203.81.71.96 Please cite any policy/guidance based justification for the page staying where it is. Please provide a citation of anything related to: "Call any "Bamar" Burman, he would simply walk out."

Comment It may also be instructive to note how the national/ethnic roots of people like Aung San Suu Kyi are considered

I suspect that the real nonsense is in the current name. Based on Wikipedia guidelines this would seems to me to be no justification leave the page where it is. GregKaye 08:02, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Burmese, Burmans and Myanmar are not the same thing. "Myanmar people" and "Burmese people" refer to all the inhabitants of Burma, though both originally referred only to the Burmans. "Burmans" is specific to the dominant ethnic group in modern English. RGloucester — ☎ 13:17, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

"Burmese" and "Myanmarese" refer to the nation; in fact, Myanmar is the historic spelling of the word pronounced Bamar in modern speech, but the dictatorship forced the nation to distinguish between the two and therefore an artificial pronunciation difference has been thoroughly established to separate the two and insists on employing Bamar, Myanmar, Yangon as noted above just like Kenya demanded many years ago that English speakers stop saying the name of their country as keeeeenya and the correct pronunciation has largely replaced the old one.

You'd need to search for (Bamar) AND "Aung San suu Kyi" or [(Burman) AND "Aung San suu Kyi"]. Note the latter finds Burma; I tried Burman and got no clear results, but +Bamar Aung San suu Kyi got 885,000, including [Ethnic Groups of South Asia and the Pacific: An Encyclopedia] and biographies of Aung San suu Kyi.

Also, it is common on Wikipedia to describe an ethnicity with the term X people, which is why Bamar appears as "Bamar people": it's not unprecedented in the scholarly and popular literature either. Ogress _smash! 18:17, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. I don’t see a compelling reason to move to a term that is at best historically ambiguous. It’s true that in modern usage (made popular by Burmese governments, no less), the term Burman refers to the majority ethnic group while Burmese refers to citizens of the country, regardless of ethnicity. But that distinction is fairly recent—only since independence! The colonial period usage was to use the terms interchangeably--to refer to the main ethnic group. When they were not used interchangeably, if anything, Burmans referred to the countrymen while Burmese referred to the ethnic group. In fact, that seemed to have been the chief British usage for quite some time. If I recall correctly, older versions of encyclopedia Britannica till the 80s still called Burmese the ethnic group, while they also noted that the US usage was the opposite. (Oxbridge trained writers like Htin Aung used Burmese to refer to the ethnic group down to the 70s! In fact, at least one anglophile writer Thant Myint-U still uses Burmese to refer to the main ethnic group—in his 21st century writings!)

AFAIK, the modern usage of Burmese and Burmans came to be adopted during the 50s by then democratically elected government (not the military, btw). This reflected a similar delineation effort in Burmese as well between Bamar and Myanmar. By the 1970s, at least the US-based Burma historians had adopted the Burmese governmental delineation of Burmese/Burmans.

Now, if you’re not confused enough yet, in the Burmese language, the terms Bamar and Myanmar used to mean the same. The efforts to delineate began in the 30s by nationalist students. According to the students, Bama(r) now represented everyone—see Do-Bama-Asiayon—while Myanmar represented the ethnic group. That usage carried into the 50s. See Bama-Athan. Then, something happened and usages flipped.)

That said, in the English language, the term Bamar doesn’t have the ambiguous baggage that the term Burman has. So I prefer it more than Burmans.

I don’t usually comment on Burma/Myanmar matters on Wiki because it’s just a waste of time. But I figured I’d chime in here this time. My two cents. Hybernator (talk) 01:45, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. Although both names are acceptable, Burmans is old-fashioned and used more commonly in historical context. IMO, this article title has been stable for a long time. PhyoWP *click 17:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose This page name has been stable since 2005, there are sources indicating "Burmans" is dated and confusing and Bamar is in use in the modern texts by ethnic Bamar. Ogress _smash! 18:56, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

• Relisting comment: Wikiprojects associated with this article have been notified of the requested move and asked to participate in the discussion. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:07, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose Bamar is in common usage and is consistent with Wikipedia policies. Burman has ambiguity problems. --Bejnar (talk) 13:43, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
• Comment while not disputing the views of other editors I will continue in my role as stat monkey.

(Burma OR Myanmar OR Burmese OR Myanma) AND "Bamar" gets "About 3,140 results" in books.

GregKaye 14:33, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. Burmese, Burman, Myanmar people, Bamar people are used to be essentially the same meaning and derived from same Burmese word. To avoid the ambiguity, "Bamar People" should stay as it is. The Stats may show the most/historical uses but not the best/current uses. E.g., this and this. @=={Lionslayer>^☎ 05:34, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

DNA studies

IP (121.214.38.248, 137.147.156.39), where in the two studies you posted does it say the Bamar or Burmese have "significant East Asian and Indian influences"?

• The first study by Sumerer et al says no such thing. I've read the entire study a few times, and I don't see it anywhere. The abstract says "... the Myanmar haplogroup distribution showed a typical Southeast Asian pattern, but also Northeast Asian and Indian influences." It's a study of 327 people from Myanmar living in northern Thailand. No one from Mandalay Region, arguably the Bamar heartland was represented! Read it. Anyway, if you can find a page that support your "significant" assertion, let's see it.

• The second one Afghan Hindu Kush: Where Eurasian Sub-Continent Gene Flows Converge doesn't even cover Myanmar. It mentions no Burmese, no Burman, no Bamar, no Karen, no Shan. You said "literally". Where? Which pages? Why did you even put this up as a citation?

So, how did you make the leap to "Genetic studies" and "significant"?

Just stick to the facts, IP. You can't just slap on a couple of links and start making claims that the studies don't make. Provide specific pages, which you never did--for obvious reasons. And btw, (Sumerer et al 2004: 1, 7) is the one I added, and doesn't support your assertions in any case. Hybernator (talk) 06:41, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Buddha was a Bamar

The tradition says that, as far as I can remember. And according to https://journals.equinoxpub.com/BSR/article/view/17899, the Sakya clan was definitely non-Indo-Aryan and non-Vedic. They worshipped trees, tree spirits (read nats!) and nagas, activities which look like Burmese to me. 2100s (talk) 02:44, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Title should be the Burman people.

The term Bamar is Burglish form of Burman which is used by the former military junta. There are other examples including Karen to Kayin. However, people prefer to use the term Burman and Karen instead of newly created terms Bamar or Kayin. Smartburmese (talk) 14:33, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Polluted race

According to the 23andme, most Bamars are quite polluted with Indian and Chinese DNAs. Seems like the British genocided them. 71.202.21.101 (talk) 05:25, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Wiki:Edu BS

Some random students from Wiki:Edu have added various nonsense to this article. I have removed them all. Zaww8 (talk) 12:08, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Zaww8: You need to explain why this is not reliably sourced, undue, or just not relevant. --RegentsPark (comment) 12:37, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

What the hell. It's an ethnic article. You can't add "genocide" and stupid politics "Rohingya" citizenship in every article. It's not relevant at all. Can you find genocides in Americans or even White Americans? Zaww8 (talk) 12:40, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

What should be added instead was that they were VICTIMS of genocide by the British. Massive inflows of Bengali genes to Yangon can be found in many studies, due to the British destorying everything and opening up the entire country for a demographic genocide. Zaww8 (talk) 14:17, 27 September 2021 (UTC)