Your Burmese born-day sign

Burmese tradition keeps an eight-day week: Wednesday splits into a morning (Boddahu) and an afternoon that belongs to Rahu. The time is only needed for a Wednesday birth.

Your born-day chose the first letter of your name

In Burmese tradition these two things are one decision. The day you were born decides which consonants your name is allowed to start with, so a Burmese name carries the born-day sign inside it, and someone who knows the system can hear your born-day when you introduce yourself. Everywhere else on this site the link between a name and a birth moment is a reading. Here it is a rule that was followed when you were named.

Romanisation varies between systems, so the Burmese letters are the reference and the spellings beside them are one common way of writing the sounds. The practice is widespread rather than universal: plenty of Burmese names do not follow it, particularly recent ones, and a name that does not match your born-day means nothing was done wrong.

The eight born-day signs

Each day of the Burmese week has a planet, an animal and one of the eight directions. That is not only a table: it is the layout of the planetary posts around the platform of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, one post per corner, where people go to their own born-day post and pour water over the Buddha image and the animal standing with it. Your corner is the one in the last column, and if you visit you will usually find somebody already there.

The wider Mahabote

The born-day sign is the foundation of Mahabote, the Burmese system of prediction. Beyond the eight day-signs, Mahabote assigns one of seven houses, including Binga, Adipati and Puti, from the birth day and year, read for character, relationships and fortune. Because the house formulae vary between teaching lineages, AsterNym computes the well-established born-day sign and leaves the houses as tradition to explore.

AsterNym explores these as cultural and metaphysical traditions, not scientific predictions.