What’s in a name? Plenty for the countries that have changed theirs – will Macedonia be next?
Many countries changed their names at independence, most often from ones imposed by their colonisers
As Macedonian citizens vote on Sunday on whether to rename their country “The Republic of North Macedonia”, here is a look at other nations that have changed their names.
Many countries changed their names at independence, most often from ones imposed by their colonisers.
At their independence, for example, Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), Botswana (Bechuanaland), Ghana (Gold Coast), Indonesia (Dutch East Indies), Malawi (Nyasaland) and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) were created.
The 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union saw changes to the names of its now separate republics, such as Belarus (Belorussia), as happened with the disintegration of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
A few already-sovereign nations have chosen to rebaptise themselves, as Macedonia is proposing to do to settle a dispute with Greece over its name. Here are some recent examples:
Swaziland reverts to eSwatini
Fifty years after Swaziland’s independence from Britain, King Mswati III announced in April 2018 that the tiny country would “revert to its original name”, eSwatini, which means “land of the Swazi”. Africa’s last absolute monarch caught his nation by surprise, although the change had been mooted and there was some unhappiness with the previous one, a mix of Swazi and English.