The other night I was reading in a novel that's set in the nation of Burma, and I couldn't get into my head exactly where Burma is located.
I've never been too sharp on geography when you get me out of Texas, and I'm always running into surprises. Just recently I discovered a large body of water known as the Philippine Sea, that lies just east of the Philippines. I didn't know a sea by that name existed.
Anyway, I got out the newest atlas we have at our house and gave it a thorough search, but found no trace of a country called Burma. I was pretty sure it used to be in Southeast Asia. What's happened? Did they do away with Burma?
Out in the hall closet I found my old 1975-model National Geographic Atlas, which for reasons unknown has stayed with me through six residential moves. It's coming apart in the middle but it does show Burma, right there across the Bay of Bengal from India. It has a long thin tail of real estate running down past Thailand to become part of the Malay Peninsula.
I rechecked the new atlas to discover the name Myanmar printed across the country I used to know as Burma. Have you ever heard of Myanmar before? Not me.
Wars and other upheavals are always changing the names of countries. It must keep mapmakers busy, redrawing borders and putting in new names.
Remember Mesopotamia? When I was first introduced to books and maps, Mesopotamia was my favorite foreign country. I learned to spell it before I could spell Oklahoma. Sunday school teachers told wonderful stories to little kids about Mesopotamia.
This was where the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers flowed through beautiful fertile valleys. Somewhere I got the notion that the Garden of Eden was there. We were taught that Mesopotamia was the very birthplace of civilization where people first learned to read and write.
Today Mesopotamia answers to the name Iraq.
Then there in the Middle East we used to have Persia. In my early times in school I liked everything I heard about Persia. Persian cats came from there, and Persian rugs. When I heard the name of that country, I saw shouting riders on fine horses, pounding across the desert, raising dust, waving swords. Or lying beneath palm trees in shady oases, eating grapes and dates. Seemed like a great place to be. Wild adventures every day.
Persia became Iran, and I haven't found much about it to like lately.
Some of the best city names have been changed, too. Does anybody remember Constantinople?
Long ago in my school days, kids knew that Constantinople was a fine city in Turkey when they didn't know what state Philadelphia was in.
There was this song we learned that told us how to spell the name, and kids went around thinking they were educated because they knew how to spell Constantinople. What we didn't know was that the name came from that of the Roman emperor Constantine I.
What happened to Constantinople is that it became Istanbul.
Moving back over to Asia a minute, we used to sing a song about going to Mandalay, which is a major city in Burma. "On the road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play ... ." Which puzzles me now, since that city sits square in the middle of Burma. On my map it looks a mighty long way from salt water, so I wonder how many flying fishes will be at play there, or even on the road to it.
Before leaving Burma, I wanted to be sure the name of its capital city has not been changed. Rangoon, one of my favorite place names on the planet. The very appearance of the word in print brings up visions of foreign intrigue, mystery, adventure. Movies that Humphrey Bogart should have made. If I ever get another boy dog, I intend to name him Rangoon.
Well, I just now looked on a brand-new map of Southeast Asia and the name of Burma's capital is shown to be Yangon, with Rangoon in parenthesis in small print. I have an encyclopedia that says Yangon is Burmese for Rangoon.
Even so, I figure the next step will be the disappearance of Rangoon's name from maps of the world, and it will be forever lost along with Constantinople and Persia and Mesopotamia.