Why do countries change their name?

This week, I read in the news that the King of Swaziland has decreed that the country’s name will henceforth be known as eSwatini. He’s been referring to it as such for many years but this pronouncement, carefully timed to conicide with the kingdom’s 50th anniversary of independence makes it official.

The name means “land of the Swazis” and you’re probably thinking that it’s not so far removed from “Swaziland”. The king would beg to differ. Allegedly he’s fed up with people confusing his tiny landlocked country with another, larger landlocked country: Switzerland. And the country didn’t change its name on independence, so better late than never, you might say. Regardless, as eSwatini is an absolute monarchy, the name will stay, though it has angered some in the country who say the king should have better things to focus on – like their beleagured economy for instance.

It brought to mind the announcement from the Czech Republic a couple of years ago that they’d prefer we shortened the country’s name to Czechia. The Czech Republic form would stay, but to make advertising easier, Czechia should be used if people wanted a catchier moniker. But too many people think it sounds like troubled Chechnya and the name isn’t sticking. Hungary tried something similar a few years earlier, in 2012, officially becoming Hungary after being the Hungarian Republic. I’d been calling it by the wrong name all those years.

Cape Verde officially altered the English version of its name to the Republic of Cabo Verde in 2013, though if you book a holiday to the islands, most UK agents still refer to it as Cape Verde. Changing your name is one thing. Getting others to follow suit is another thing entirely.

Often, the act of changing a country’s name comes with independence as part of a wider declaration that the country is now in charge of its own affairs. Until 1825, Bolivia was Upper Peru, Dahomey became Benin in 1975 and Upper Volta changed its name to Burkina Faso in 1984. Sri Lanka had been Ceylon until 1972 while Siam became Thailand in 1939 – and save for a short period in the 1940s it’s been Thailand ever since. I could go on.

Splits and mergers are another common reason for name changes. The island of Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganika to form Tanzania on independence in 1961. Malaya and Singapore combined with Sabah and Sarawak to become Malaysia in 1963. However, thanks to a memorable ad campaign, it will always be Malaysia Truly Asia to me. In the splits camp, Czechoslovakia divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s, spawning Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, FYR Macedonia and Montenegro.

Sometimes the changes can happen so often that people can’t keep pace. Take the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance. It was the Congo Free State in 1884, then Belgian Congo in 1908; the Republic of the Congo in 1960 before adding Democratic in 1964. Then in 1971, it became Zaire under Mobutu before reverting to the Democratic Republic of the Congo once more in 1997. And just to make matters more confusing still, the country next door now calls itself Republic of the Congo.

Now the Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has thrown his hat into the ring as well. He suggests that the suffix -stan doesn’t have the best connotations when it comes to attracting investment, thanks to some politically troubled neighbours. He proposes perhaps Kazak Yeli or “country of the Kazakhs”. The country’s ethnic diversity doesn’t make this an easy switch. Only time will tell how that one pans out.