Burmese royal titles are the royal styles that were in use by the Burmese monarchy until the disintegration of the last Burmese monarchy, the Konbaung dynasty, in 1885. These titles were exclusively used by those of royal lineage (မင်းမျိုးမင်းနွယ်; ထီးရိုးနန်းရိုး; ဆွေတော်မျိုးတော်), or more formally, Maha Zi Maha Thwei (မဟာဆီမဟာသွေး).

Titles and rank in the Konbaung dynasty

King

Kings in Burma assumed a distinctive regnal name and title, usually a combination of Pali and Sanskrit, upon ascending to the throne. The King was known by a variety of titles, including the following:

King's consorts

In the early days of the Konbaung Dynasty, Kings had at most, three Senior Queens. Innovations of a fourth Senior Queen and four lesser queens dated to the last quarter of the 1700s. Queens of first rank (Senior Queens) were called Nanya Mibaya (နန်းရ မိဖုရား, lit. 'Queens who Possess Palaces'). The expansion and ranking of Senior Queens was an innovation during the reign of King Singu Min (1776-1782). In order of precedence, they were as follows: There was a special position between Nanya Mibaya (first rank) and Ahsaungya Mibaya (second rank) named Nanzwe Mibaya (နန်းဆွယ်မိဖုရား), for the blue-blood sisters of the King, primed to become a Nanya Mibaya if any of them died. For example, when the first Anauk Nandaw Mibaya of King Mindon, Pintale Mibaya died, her sister Yinge Mibaya, one of the four Nanzwe Mibayas of King Mindon, was replaced as the second Anauk Nandaw Mibaya. As they were the blue-blooded ones, they could not be given the position of ordinary queens. So they became Nanzwe Mibayas. This position was created only during the reign of a king who had many queens, such as Bodawpaya and Mindon Min. Royal Queens of second rank were known as Ahsaungya Mibaya (အဆောင်ရမိဖုရား, lit. 'Queens who Possess Royal Apartments'). These ranks were created during the reign of King Tharrawaddy Min (1837-1846). In order of precedence, they were as follows: Royal Queens of third rank were known as Shweye Hsaungya Mibaya (ရွှေရေးဆောင်ရ မိဖုရား, lit. 'Royal Queens who Possess the Gilded Chambers'). These were innovations dating to the reign of King Bodawphaya. In order of precedence, they were as follows: Royal Queens of fourth rank were considered minor consorts: Royal concubines were typically the daughters of officials and tributary princes. They received no rank and in order of precedence were as follows: Consorts were granted titles based on rank, divided into two grades (queens and for concubines). The styles of queens contained the following words based on rank, as follows (in order of precedence): The styles of royal concubines contained the following words based on rank, as follows (in order of precedence):

Princes

Royal princes included the sons and brothers of the King (Minnyi Mintha) who were ranked, as follows (in order of precedence): Non-royal princes were individuals of non-royal lineage who were promoted to the rank of prince, and were divided into there ranks, each of which consisted of 18 princes at any given time, divided into 9 of the left and 9 of the right.: They were ranked, as follows (in order of precedence): Princely titles were granted based on the prince's rank (of which there were 12 total), which divided into three grades, as follows (in order of precedence):

Princesses

The ranks of the King's daughters were determined by the rank of their mothers. These ranks in order of precedence were as follows: The Crown Princess in line to become chief queen, specially designated to wed the Crown Prince was known as the Tabindaing Minthami (တစ်ပင်တိုင် မင်းသမီး) or as the Einshe Hteik Hta Mibaya (အိမ်ရှေ့ထိပ်ထား မိဖုရား).

Ranking officials

High-ranking court officials (အမတ်, amat) were also ranked into 9 ranks, representing their place at the Great Audience Hall during obeisance ceremonies (gadaw), as follows (in order of precedence): Said officials also received 11 types of titles commensurate with their rank, as follows (in order of precedence): The wives of some high-ranking officials also received rank, as follows (in order of precedence):

Sources