Burmese Name Generator

Burmese names work differently from most naming systems: there are no family surnames, and nothing is inherited from parents. A person in Myanmar simply has a name of one to four syllables, each of them a meaningful word. Aung means "success", Kyaw "famous", Win "bright", Myat "noble", Thiri "splendor", Hnin "snow" and Phyu "white". A father might be Kyaw Soe, his daughter Su Myat Noe and his son Aung Zaw Min, and none of them shares a name element unless the parents choose to. Doubling a syllable (Nwe Nwe, Tin Tin, Zaw Zaw) is a common and affectionate pattern, especially for women.

Tradition ties the first letter of a name to the day of the week a child was born. Monday-born children get names starting with K, Kh, G or Ng (Kyaw, Khin), Tuesday with S or Z (Soe, Zaw), Wednesday with L, W or Y (Lin, Win, Ye), Thursday with P, Ph, B or M (Phyo, Myint), Friday with Th or H (Thida, Hla), Saturday with T, Ht, D or N (Tun, Htet, Nu) and Sunday with a vowel (Aung, Aye, Ei). Many families still follow this, so a character called Aung Kyaw was, in theory, born on a Sunday.

Honorifics do the work that surnames do elsewhere. Men are addressed as Maung (younger), Ko (peer) or U (senior); women as Ma (younger or peer) or Daw (senior). "U Thant" and "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi" are titles plus names, not first and last names. Older names tend to be one or two syllables, while children born since the 1990s often carry three or four.