Blog

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 11, 2020

Computer names

ENIAC
EDSAC
EDVAC

Company names

IBM
ICL
Cisco
Apple
Google

Product names

iPod
iPad
IPhone

Miscellaneous

April,
May,
June

Aryu,
Wunna,
Thukha,
Bala

Kan,
Nyan,
Viriya

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 10, 2020

Naming conventions

Disciplines
Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry

Towns / Cities
Roads / Streets
Examinations / Awards

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 4, 2020

Early times

Christian Name

Surname

Later

First and Last Names

First, Middle and Last Names
Middle Initial
Some systems use “X” for no Middle Name

Hyphenated Names
Spanish / Mexicans combine their parents’ name

Clan Name

Family Name

Religious Name

Name for Priest / Monk

A name may have a meaning

AnandaThuriya : Man of infinite valor

Thant : Clean / Pure / Pristine

Fitz, Mac, Mc : Son of

Naming conventions

vary with culture, place …

My name has been mis-spelled and mis-pronounced as

HAL
LA
LAH
HALA
MINH
MING

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Broadcast on November 17, 2020

Htun Aung wrote :

၁၉၇၈ခုနှစ်ဝန်းကျင်​လောက်ကYMCA,Rangoonမှာထိုစဥ်ကမြန်မာပြည်Chess championများဖြစ်ကြတဲ့Saya Dawson နဲ့ ဆရာဦး​ကျော်သန်း(ကုန်သွယ်​ရေး)တို့အကြိတ်အနယ်ယှဥ်ပြိုင်ကြတာကိုရင်ခုံစွာကြည့်ခဲ့ဘူးပါတယ်။ထိုစဥ်ကမြန်မာနိုင်ငံစစ်တုရင်အဖွဲ့ချုပ်ဥက္ကဌကဦးခွန်ဖြူ(ဗိုလ်ကြီး-ငြိမ်း)မှဦး​ကျော်သန်း(ကုန်သွယ်​ရေး)သို့လွှဲ​ပြောင်းခါစဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

မှတ်မှတ်ရရအဖြစ်ကိုတင်စွမ်း(Mec64-70)မြန်မာ့စစ်တုရင်ချန်ပီယံ၊​မှော်ဘီမင်​သော်စီမံကိန်းတာဝန်ခံအင်/ယာအဖြစ်တာဝန်ထမ်း​ဆောင်စဥ်ရန်ကုန်မှ​မှော်ဘီသို့ကိုတင်စွမ်းအိမ်မှာတစ်ညအိပ်သွား၍စစ်တုရင်ကစားရင်းopening,middle game,end game​တွေနည်းနာသင်ကြားမှုခံယူဘူးပါတယ်။ထိုစဥ်မိမိမှမြန်မာပြည်စစ်တုရင်အကြိုလူ​ရွေးပွဲဝင်​ရောက်ယှဥ်ပြိုင်မှာမို့သူငယ်ချင်းဆီguidelineသွားယူတာပါ။လူရွေးပွဲမှာအ​ရွေးမခံရပါ။ရှုံးပါတယ်။သူငယ်ချင်းချံပီယံကိုတင်စွမ်းကိုအားနာရပါတယ်။

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Video Broadcast

In December 1920, there were three significant events.

• On December 1, 1920, Rangoon University ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် was established with Rangoon College ရန်ကုန်ကာလိပ် and Judson College ဂျပ်ဆင်ကောလိပ် as the constituent colleges.
  The colleges are also known by other names (e.g. Government College, Baptist College)
• On December 5, 1920, the First RU Students’ Strike ပထမ ရန်ကုန် တက္ပသိုလ် ကျောင်းသား သပိတ် took place.
  They protested the 1920 Rangoon University Act ဥပဒေ as too narrow and restrictive.
• In December 1920, Saya U Ba Toke ဆရာ ဦးဘတုတ် was born as a Phwa Bet Taw ဖွားဘက်တော် of the above two.
  For some reason, there is a discrepancy between Saya’s official DOB (Date of Birth) and true DOB.

Rangoon University (RU)

• Initially had three Faculties မဟာဌာန and eight departments ဌာန (including Law)
• Initially had six professors ပါမောက္ခ
• RU gradually extended its offerings (beyond Science သိပ္ပံ and Arts ဝိဇ္ဇာ).
• In particular, the opening of engineering အင်ဂျင်နီယာ classes was planned around 1923 and executed in 1924.
• In 1927, the first batch of engineering students (who had Bachelors degree) graduated with the “accelerated courses” option.
• In 1928, the second batch of engineering students (who joined after finishing the I.Sc.) graduated.
• RU was closed from 1942 to 45.
  RU Silver Jubilee was not celebrated as a high-key event.
• RU celebrated the Golden Jubilee (GJ) ရွှေရတု in 1970.
  Dr. Aung Gyi (ဒေါက်တာ အောင် ကြီး Professor of Civil Engineering မြို့ပြအင်ဂျင်နီယာပါမောက္ခ) and U Thet Lwin (ဦးသက်လွင် Burmese saya at the Institute of Economics စီးပွါးရေူတက္ကသိုလ်) were some of the GJ organizers.
  The RIT Ah Nu Pyinnya Shins ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတတက္ကသိုလ် အနုပညာရှင်များ took part in the GJ Entertainment Program as “Swel Daw Yeik Troupe စွယ်တော်ရိပ် အငြိမ့်” .
  The term “Swel Daw Yeik” became synonymous with RIT [its predecessors and its successors].
  Swel Daw Yeik Ah Nyeint (with Minthamees မင်းသမီး and Lu Shwin Daws လူရွှင်တော်) and Htee Yein (ထီး ယိမ်း RIT Belles with colorful Parasols) were hits at the GJ celebration.
  I was a volunteer member of the “Zay Nay Yar Cha Hta Yay စျေး နေရာချ ထားရေး subcommittee headed by Saya U Hla Tun Aung (ဦးလှထွန်းအောင် Geography ပထဝီ).
  Those who applied for stalls and/or stage included Actor Maung Maung Tar (မောင်မောင်တာ promoting his make up) and the then amateur band “Playboys” တီးဝိုင်း requesting a “high” stage (for security concerns).
  
• RU celebrated the Diamond Jubilee စိန်ရတု in 1995.
  
• RU celebrated the “Yar Pyie Ah Kyo” ရာပြည့် အကြို in December 2019.
  The opening song was “Mya Kyun Nyo” မြကျွန်းညိုညို composed by Tekkatho Maung Ngwe Hlinne (တက္ကသိုလ် မောင်ငွေလှိုုင်း Saya U Thet Lwin).
  
• RU Centennial Celebrations were planned for November and December of 2020.
  Due to the pandemic, many events were held virtually.
  Kyemon ကြေးမုံ and Myanar Ah Lin မြန်မာ့အလင်း newspapers သတင်းစာ featured articles about RU.
  The TV stations featured interviews, songs …

First RU Students’ Strike

• Eleven “senior” students led the Boycott of the Rangoon University Act of 1920.
  
• They were unhappy with the restrictions of the RU Act and decided to hold a boycott (strike) on December 7, 1920.
  
• Due to a news leak, the protests were moved to December 5, 1920.
  
• The strike resulted in the establishment of Amyotha Kyaung (အမျိုးသားကျောင်း National Schools) and Amyotha Kaw Leik (အမျိြးသားကောလိပ် National College).
  The event is celebrated as Ah Myo Tha Aung Pwe Nay (အမျိုးသားျအာင်ပွဲနေ့ National Day).
  The Burmese date (မြန်မာသက္ကရာဇ် 10th Waning day of Tazaungmon တန်ဆောင်မုန်းလပြည့် ကျော် / လဆုတ် ဆယ် ရက် is used for the Celebration.
  
• Arzani U Razak was an early graduate of the National College. He served as Principal of a National School in Mandalay.
  He became Minister of Education in Bogyoke Aung San’s cabinet.
  
• Prime Minister U Nu (ဦးနု), United Nations Secretary General U Thant (ဦးသန့်) and Ahmyotha Pyinnya Wun / Educator / Writer U Po Kyar (အမျိုးသား ပညာဝန် ဦးဖိုးကျား) are notable sayas from the National Schools.
  
• The boycott was responsible for the amendments ပြင်ဆင်ချက် to the RU Act.
  e.g. opening of schools for engineering and medicine,
  
• A pillar ကျောက်တိုင် was set up on Shwe Dagon Pagoda in memory of the Boycott.

Sayagyi U Ba Toke (Dec 26, 1920 – Dec 2, 2020)

• He is one of the oldest and senior sayas.
  Some senior sayas (e.g. Anne Sine) passed away in early 2020.
  
• Received A.M (Master of Arts in Mathematics) မဟာဝိဇ္ဇာ ဘွဲ့ from Harvard University ဟားဗတ်တက္ကသိုလ်
• Served as Assistant Lecturer လက်ထောက်ကထိက, Lecturer ကထိက and Professor ပါမောက္ခ of Mathematics သင်္ချာ at RU ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် and RASU ရန်ကုန် ဝိဇ္ဇာ / သိပ္ပံ တက္ကသိုလ်
• Promoted to Rector ပါမောက္ခချုပ်, MASU မန္တလေး ဝိဇ္ဇာ / သိပ္ပံ တက္ကသိုလ်
• With his own volition, he transferred to RIT ရန်ကုန်စက်မှုတက္ကသိုလ် as Professor of (Engineering) Mathematics.
  
• As a Saya of engineering sayas (e.g. Dr. Aung Gyi, U Min Wun and U Khin Aung Kyi), he was invited to attend SPZP-2000 ဆရာပူဇော်ပွဲ and give a speech.
• Saya attended all SPZPs except SPZP-2002 (which he had to forgo due to Sayagadaw’s health).
  
• Played Chinlon ခြင်းလုံး and Soccer ဘော်လုံး
• Co-chair of RU Sports Council
  အားကစား ကောင်စီ Managed the Soccer program.
• Headed the Burmese delegation မြန်မာအားကစားအဖွဲ့ to the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo တိုကျို အိုလံပစ်
• Until his 80s, Saya was active သွက်လက် လှုပ်ရှား
  (e.g. walk to Shwe Dagon Pagoda ရွှေတိဂုံ ဘုရား with his dhamma friends).
• In his 90s, Saya had physical limitations, but his mental faculty was strong as ever.
  
• Saya Dr. Khin Maung Swe (ဒေါက်တာ ခင်မောင်ဆွေ Tekkatho Maung Thin Char, တက္ကသိုလ် မောင်သင်္ချာ GBNF ကွယ်လွန်) interviewed Saya.
  Sayama Daw Myint Myint Khaing (ဆရာမ ဒေါ်မြင့်မြင့်ခိုင် daughter of Arzani Mahn Ba Khaing အာဇာနည် မန်းဘခိုင်) transcribed the tapes.
  The book covering Sayagyi’s Life Journey was published by the RU Thin Char Mi Thar Su ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် သင်္ချာ မိသညးစု for Sayagyi’s 80th birthday.
  
• Sayagyi gave me an autographed copy.

Two Sayagyis

• Pu Zaw Pwe (PZP) — paying homage to mentors — is a noble tradition.
  They are also known as Saya Pu Zaw Pwe and Acariya Pu Zaw Pwe.
  
• There have been micro-PZPs, mini-PZPs and grand PZPs.
  
• Saya U Ba Than (born on October 2, 1930) usually visits and pay homage to his saya Sayagyi U Ba Toke at least once every year.
  

Paying homage to Sayagyi U Ba Toke

• During my visits to Yangon, I paid homage to Sayagyi U Ba Toke.
  
• On one visit, Sayagyi gave me an autographed copy of “Life Journey of Mathematics Professor Sayagyi U Ba Toke”.
  The book was written by Saya Dr. Khin Maung Swe (Tekkatho Maung Thin Char, GBNF) based on his interviews with Sayagyi U Ba Toke.
  It also covers the early Thin Char Sayagyis.
  The book was published by Rangoon University Thin Char Mi Thar Su for Sayagyi’s 80th birthday.

• In January 2017, Pansy Ba Toke (Thynn Thynn, ChE 74) asked her son-in-law and daughter to pick up Sayagyi U Ba Than, Saya U Tin Htut and me at Winner Inn to see her father Sayagyi U Ba Toke.
  Sayagyi had some problems with mobility and vision, but his mind remains crisp and clear.
  
• Pansy was a member of the Swel Daw Yeik “Htee Yein” at the Rangoon University Golden Jubilee in 1970. She has offered transportation to the Sayas who want to visit her father.
  
• Sayagyi sometimes defer celebrating his birthday so that his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren — far and near — could join the celebration.
  
• Sayagyi is pre-deceased by
  his beloved spouse, his second son (Soe Win, 6th out of his 8 children) and his second daughter (Kitty, 3rd out of his 8 children)