Talk:Aung San Suu Kyi

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 * Aung San Suu Kyi 1951.jpg (discussion)
 * Aung San and family.jpg (discussion)
 * Khin Kyi and family.jpg (discussion)

Political career split suggestion
Suggestion: split Political career section into new page/article.

Reason: it's too long, especially on mobile.

EdhyRa (talk) 10:45, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * See Political career of Donald Trump or Political career of Abraham Lincoln (1849–1861) for references.

Unnecessary and inaccurate explanation of the honorific "Daw"
Under the section Name, there is the sentence "[...] is often referred to as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw, literally meaning "aunt" [...]". There was a similar discussion but

This is inaccurate as "Daw" (ဒေါ် ) doesn't mean Aunt necessarily. At least the prefix အ for အဒေါ်  or the suffix ကြီး* for ဒေါ်ကြီး is required to imply that the person in question is an aunt; with more prefixes and suffixes available to imply more meanings. One cannot call their aunt just "Daw" nor "Daw [their name]" as this would imply you're referring to her with the full honorific and name which signifies she is a stranger. This is a Burmese-to-Burmese dictionary which seems to be the most accurate capturing the nuances but unfortunately lacks accessibility. I speak Burmese natively so I've transcribed the relevant portion below so you can verify in the translation software of your choice. I've also included my translations of each entry.

The entries in question at page 161 for No. 1,2,3 and page 364 for No. 4 of the dictionary I linked:


 * 1) ဒေါ်၊ (စည်း)—ယဉ်ကျေးသောအားဖြင့် မိန်းမ၏ အမည်ရှေ့က ထည့်သုံးသော စကား။
 * 2) ဒေါ်ကြီး*—အမေ၏အစ်မ။
 * 3) ကြီး*တော်—အမေ၏ညီမ။
 * 4) အဒေါ်—မိခင်၏ညီမ။

English translations of each entry done by me:


 * 1) Daw, (Social rule)—The word put in front of a woman's name as a show of politeness
 * 2) Daw Gyii—Mother's older sister
 * 3) Gyii Daw—Mother's younger sister
 * 4) A-Daw—Mother's younger sister

English translations of each entry by Google Translate as of 29 June 2024:


 * 1) ဒေါ်၊ (စည်း) Aunt (Hin)—a polite word used before a woman's name.
 * 2) ဒေါ်ကြီး* Daw Gyii—Mother's older sister.
 * 3) ကြီး*တော် Greatest—Mother's sister.
 * 4) အဒေါ်  Aunt—mother's sister.

I'd highly encourage not trusting Google Translate as much in this as it is very unreliable for Burmese text. Though in spite of the inaccurate translations, my point still stands. If there are any other native Burmese speakers reading this, please confirm my translations.

This error seem to have arose from the fact that the words are similar and seem to be of same etymological origin. I've read once that the honorific was derived for referring to someone that is someone of similar age to one's aunt though I could find no source. That line of thinking is actually inferred in this archived discussion.

Still, my recommendation is to simply remove the inaccuracy so the sentence would be: "In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi is often referred to as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw is not part of her name but is an honorific for any older and revered woman, akin to "Madam"."

Please let me know if you can find another source for the translations.

* Alternatively spelled ဂျီး for ဒေါ်ဂျီး which is also technically correct but considered archaic or careless spelling. LynnDieEule (talk) 18:07, 28 June 2024 (UTC)