Rakhine
/rəˈkaɪn/noun
A member of an ethnic group chiefly associated with western Myanmar, or the language and historical region associated with that group.
Did you know?“Rakhine” is the modern English form of a Burmese ethnonym, while “Arakan” is a historical foreign name for the same region; scholars have not established a single certain ancient root for either name.
Etymological Timeline
Premodern period
Burmese
ရခိုင် (ရခိုင်သား)
“Rakhine; a Rakhine person or the Rakhine people, in Burmese usage”
16th–18th centuries
Portuguese
Arracão
“A European rendering of the name of the coastal kingdom and region later known as Arakan”
17th–18th centuries
English
Aracan / Arakan
“Historical English forms referring to the kingdom and region on Myanmar’s western coast”
19th century
English
Arakanese
“The historical English adjective and ethnonym for the people, language, or region”
20th century
English
Rakhine
“A modern English transliteration increasingly used for the people, language, and state formerly widely called Arakan”