The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.
The official English name was changed by the country's government from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar in 1989, and still later to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, which since then has been the subject of controversies and mixed incidences of adoption.
There's more to the story, of course. And politics play a role in why some nations still use Burma, not Myanmar, when referring to the country. The BBC (which still refers to the country only as Burma) writes that : Burmah, as it was spelt in the 19th Century, is a local corruption of the word Myanmar.ince 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; the U.S. Government did not adopt the name, which is a derivative of the Burmese short-form name Myanma Naingngandaw, the Factbook says. So there you go.