Karenni people
ethnic group
The Karenni (Burmese: ကရင်နီ, lit. 'red Karen'), also known as the Kayah (Burmese: ကယားလူမျိုး) or Kayah Li (Karenni: ꤊꤢ꤬ꤛꤢ꤭ꤜꤟꤤ꤬), are a Karenic-speaking ethnic group native to the Kayah State of Myanmar.
According to a 1983 census, the Karenni consist of the following groups: Kayah, Geko (Kayan Ka Khaung, Gekho, Kayan Kadao), Geba (Kayan Gebar, Gaybar), Lahwi (Kayan Lahwi), Bre, Manu-Manau (Kayan Manumanao), Yintale, Yinbaw kayan kangan, Bwe and Pa'O. Several of the groups (Geko, Geba, Padaung, Yinbaw) belong to Kayan, a subgroup in region of Karenni. The groups Bre and Manu-Manau belong to the Kayaw subgroup.
Karenni is Kayah/Kayah Li with approximate 90000 populations and the term Karennies is used to merely represent all nine tribes native to the region of the so-called Kayah state. Karennies consist of nine sub-tribes namely Kayah, Padaung (Kayan) (Burmese: ပဒေါင်/ကယန်း), Geko (Burmese: ဂေခို), Geba (Burmese: ဂေဘား), Zayein (Burmese: ဇယိန်), Bre (Burmese: ပရဲ), Manu-Manau (Burmese: မနု-မနော), Yintale (Burmese: ယင်းတလဲ) and Yinbaw (Burmese: ယင်းဘော်).
Karenni States
The Karenni States were a collection of small states inhabited by Karenni people, ruled by petty princes named myozas. These included Kantarawadi, the only state whose ruler was promoted to a saopha or Sawba (စော်ဘွား) (like that of Maharaja in India), Kyebogyi, Bawlake, Nammekon and Naungpale. They were independent until British rule in Burma, and had feudal ties to the Burmese kingdom. The states bordered the Shan States of Mong Pai, Hsatung and Mawkmai to the north, Thailand to the east, the Papun district of Lower Burma to the south, and a stretch of the Karen Hills inhabited by the Bre and various other small tribes to the west. During British rule, the Karenni had a garrison of military police, which was stationed at the village of Loikaw.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Karenni people” is ethnic group. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Karenni, people and ethnic, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1267758. The Library of Congress control number is sh85071796. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983.
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This entry incorporates text from “Karenni people” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.