Rakhine State

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Flag of Arakan state

Arakan is a Burmese state on the western coast of Myanmar. It is next to Bangladesh.

Etymology[change | change source]

Map of Arakan state

The term Rakhine may have come from the Pali word "Rakkhapura" from "Rakkhita" meaning the land of the people of Rakhasa (Rakhasa > Rakkha > Rakkhaing > Rakhaing) who were given this name in honor of their preservation of their national heritage and ethics or morality. The word Rakhine means, "one who maintains his own race."[1] In the Rakhine language, the land is called Rakhinepray, the ethnic Rakhine are called Rakhinetha.

Arakan, used in British colonial times, is believed to be a Portuguese corruption of the word Rakhine that is still popularly used in English. Many English language users[note 1] no not use the name changes made by the military government.

Notes[change | change source]

  1. For example, see Staff (2009) "An Introduction To The Toponymy Of Burma" Archived 2008-10-31 at the Wayback Machine The Permanent Committee of Geographic Names (PCGN), United Kingdom

References[change | change source]

  1. စန္ဒမာလာလင်္ကာရ။ ရခိုင်ရာဇဝင်သစ် ရခိုင်သမိုင်း ၊ ၁၅ ၊ ၁၈ ရာစု။