Myanmar became independent from the United Kingdom on 4 January of 1948 , with the official name of the Union of Burma, a name that came to adopt after a period as "Socialist Republic of Union of Burma" (4 January 1974 to 23 September of 1988 ). On June 18th of 1989 , the military regime Burma announced that the official name of the country would become the Union of Myanmar. The new designation was recognized by the United Nations and the European Union , but not by the governments of USA and the UK [5] . According to the Constitution of 2009 , the country's name changed to "Republic of the Union of Myanmar", as implemented on October 21 of 2010 [6] .