Downtown Yangon, facing Sule Pagoda and Hlaing River
Yangon (Burmese: ရန္ကုန္မ္ရုိ့, population 6,007,000 (2007 census), formerly Rangoon, is the largest city and former capital of Myanmar (previously known as Burma, prior to 1989). The city is located at the convergence of the Yangon and Bago Rivers about 19 miles (30 km) away from the Gulf of Martaban. At 16°48' North, 96°09' East (16.8, 96.15), its standard time zone is UTC/GMT +6:30 hours. In November 2005, the military junta began relocating the capital to Naypyidaw, Mandalay Division which was officially named as the new capital on 26 March 2006.[1]
Yangon is a combination of the two words yan (ရန္) and koun (ကုန္), which mean "enemies" and "run out of" respectively. It is also translated as "end of strife". "Rangoon" most likely comes from the British corruption of the pronunciation of "Yangon" in the Arakanese dialect of Burmese.
Yangon had been a model city in Southeast Asia. Three kinds of roads were incorporated into the design. Roads running west to east were broad roads 160 feet (49 m) wide. Roads running south consisted of two small 30 feet (9.1 m) wide roads, one medium-sized road 50 feet (15 m) wide, two more 35 feet wide roads and then one broad 100 feet (30 m) wide road. This order was repeated from west to east. The smaller roads were numbered, while the medium and broad roads were given names, some for eminent persons of that time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangon
; "Rangoon")
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