Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.619

c10.619

**AVA**, n.p. The name of the city which was for several centuries the capital of the Burmese Empire, and was applied often to that State itself. This name is borrowed, according to Crawfurd, from the form Awa or Awak used by the Malays. The proper Burmese form was Eng-wa, or ‘the Lake-Mouth,’ because the city was built near the opening of a lagoon into the Irawadi; but this was called, even by the Burmese, more popularly A-wā, ‘The Mouth.’ The city was founded A.D. 1364. The first European occurrence of the name, so far as we know, is (c. 1440) in the narrative of Nicolo Conti, and it appears again (no doubt from Conti's information) in the great World-Map of Fra Mauro at Venice (1459).