Word.ws English Dictionary

Danu

Danu noun: an ethnic group of Myanmar.

Noun

Danu pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) An ethnic group of Myanmar.
    • Everywhere the Danu wears the turban and jacket of the Burman, but in most cases he prefers the Shan trousers to the Burmese loin-cloth.1899, James George Scott, John Percy Hardiman, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, Volume 1, Part 1, page 563

Proper noun (1)

Danu

  1. The language spoken by the Danu people, considered by the Burmese government to be a dialect of the Intha-Danu language.

Proper noun (2)

Danu

  1. (Irish) A hypothesised goddess of Irish mythology.
    • This [battle] appears in Celtic history as that in which the Tuatha dè Danann, the tribes of the goddess Danu fought and conquered the Fir Bolg on Midsummer's Day.1897, The Westminster Review, Volume 148: July-December 1897, page 17
    • The old poets thought that the tribes of the goddess Danu were of a perfect beauty, and the creators of beautiful people and beautiful arts.1897, W. B. Yeats, “The Tribes of Danu”, in The New Review, Volume 17: July-December 1897, William Heinemann, page 550

Proper noun (3)

Danu

  1. (Hinduism) A Hindu primordial goddess who had numerous children.

Danu meaning in Myanmar

Danu in Myanmar

Burmese ethnic group
ဓနု dha.nu.

Origin of Danu

Borrowed from Burmese ဓနု (dha.nu.).

Learned borrowing from Old Irish, from a reconstructed nominative form of the genitive Danann (also spelled Donand or Danand). In particular, Danann is attested in the term Tuatha Dé Danann, which is typically translated "tribe of Danu" but used as the collective name for certain Irish gods (or, more prosaically, the people of a particular wave of immigration to Ireland, in the traditional history). The etymology is controversial and has been debated since the 19th century. Some scholars identify Danu with the goddess Anu, perhaps as a contraction of día Anu ("goddess Anu").

Borrowed from Sanskrit दनु (danu).

Words formed from Danu

Questions about Danu

What does Danu mean?
Danu means an ethnic group of Myanmar.
What is Danu in Myanmar?
Danu in Myanmar is ဓနု (dha.nu.). See Danu meaning in Myanmar.
What part of speech is Danu?
Danu can be a noun or a proper noun.

Words near Danu in the dictionary

  1. Dantzic
  2. Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition
  3. Dantzig-Wolfe decompositions
  4. Dantzler
  5. Dantzlers
  6. Danu
  7. Danub
  8. Danuban
  9. Danube
  10. Danube bleak
  11. Danube bleaks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Danu (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Danu.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/danu. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.