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Between Poland and Austria, between Germany and Slovakia lies which country?
If we look at these country names next to each other, the Czech Republic sticks out.
It's the only one in the bunch called by its longer, formal name.
If we used formal names for all these other countries, we'd call them:
The Republic of Poland, the Republic of Austria,
the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Slovak Republic.
But we don't.
We use shorter, practical names to save time and breath.
*soft breath*
For country names where that's not easily possible, we use formal initialisms
like UAE, UK, or USA,
as well as informal, sometimes imprecise, but useful short names like
Emirates, Britain and America.
Not for the Czech Republic.
To answer why, I've invited the leading expert on longer than usual country names:
"Thank you so much for coming.
Please explain to the audience why exactly it is,
that this Central European country is usually referred to by its formal name,
Professor Dr. Dr. Smith?"
"That's a great question! It has to do..."
- "I'm sorry, I'll have to stop you there.
This skit's gone on for way too long, so we'll have to continue this chat some other time.
But thanks for coming, Professor Dr. Dr. Smith..."
- "Not at all." -
*big breath*
The important thing first:
The Czech Republic *has* a short name:
Czechia;
oficially adopted in 1993, then again, with emphasis, in 2016.
There's just one problem:
This is how rarely people use "Czechia" compared to "Czech Republic".
It seems the people of Czechia have a ... difficult relationship with their country's name;
understandable, since for most of history, there *was* no sovereign country called Czechia.
Between 1993 and the Middle Ages, its territory
- made up of the regions of Bohemia, Moravia and a dash of Silesia -
was only *part* of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, itself a part of the Holy Roman Empire,
then of the Habsburg Monarchy, then of Czechoslovakia.
So, the concept of Czechia as a nation, and a name for that nation, is a pretty new one.
Even before it became its own state,
one needed some way to adress the Czech part of Czechoslovakia.
There was the word "Česko"
- the Czech language version of "Czechia" and one half of "Československo" -
floating around, but it was far from generally accepted,
so one would often sidestep the issue by calling it
"Czech lands", "Czech region", and so on.
In 1993, the estranged couple
parted ways and "Česko/Czechia" was proclaimed as the official short form
of the newly founded Czech Republic.
And still, the sidestepping continued:
Next to the formal name, people kept using "alternatives" like "Bohemia",
which is essentially pulling a Holland by naming all of the country after one of its parts,
or "Czechomoravia" - two out of three ain't bad -
or simply "Czech" ... on its own ... which ... is an ADJECTIVE.
which is not a great point because 1:
Chechnya isn't even a sovereign country and 2:
if we followed this "mixuppable country names should be changed" logic,
Slovakia and Slovenia, Austria and Australia, Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
and lohohots of other country names also would need changing,
only because a person unlearned, could maybe, conceivably, perhaps, by some chance mix them up.
The *real* reason why people don't say Czechia?
(quietly) They never did.
The name was not entirely new, but really unfamiliar.
So, Czechia's leaders launched a campaign to inform people that this,
their country's name, was in fact Czechia
...is what they should have done.
Instead, they welcomed the new name with unease or even rejection,
so the public, exposed to this tug of war, country name edition,
naturally had a hard time getting used to it.
For 22 years, no one had even bothered to register
"Česko/Czechia" as official short names with ISO or the UN,
so "Czech Republic" appeared as both the formal *and* short form of the country name.
It took years before "Česko" unambiguously overtook "Česká republika" in usage.
For Czechia, that change is still to come.
Czechia is the official short name of the Czech Republic,
comprised of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia.
The country is not called Bohemia,
or Czechoslovakia, and least of all is it called Czech.
In formal speech and writing, you use "Czech Republic",
everywhere else, you use "Czechia".