In February 2019, the 28-year naming dispute between Greece and the country referred to
as the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia was finally settled. The dispute arose in
1991 after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when the country declared its independence as the
“Republic of Macedonia”, short-form simply “Macedonia”. Greece took issue with this
given that Macedonia was a historically Greek kingdom, and indeed there still exists a region
of Greece called “Macedonia”.
An agreement was made for the country to change its name, despite a lot of protest from the
locals, to the “Republic of North Macedonia”.
The name change was made, in-part, to keep the peace with their neighbour, which in-turn
would allow the country to begin its accession to the EU and NATO. Its membership to both
had always been blocked by Greece.
It turns out that countries changing their name is not actually as uncommon as you might
expect - a name is used for identification, and its importance cannot be understated.
This is why so many nations have spent so much time internally debating what their name
should be, and, occasionally, externally fighting over it. So what other reasons might a country
have for changing its name?
One answer to this question can be seen in a name change that took place shortly before
that of North Macedonia. In 2018, the African nation formerly known as Swaziland changed
its name to Eswatini, marking the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence. The name
change was partly to avoid confusion with the somewhat similar sounding country of Switzerland,
but more importantly, was done to bring the English name of the country closer to that
of the country’s original native Swazi name. In that sense, the country moved from an exonym,
to an endonym. An exonym is an external name for a geographical location, whereas an endonym
is an internal name.
This kind of change from an exonym to an endonym has been especially common in countries trying
to distance themselves from their colonial past, in particular in Africa, where the process
is known as “Africanisation”. There are several examples of this, such as: Northern
and Southern Rhodesia which became Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively, French Sudan,
which became Mali, as well as the Gold Coast Colony, which renamed itself “Ghana” upon
independence.
Now, moving over to Asia, is another country that also sought to get away from the remnants
of colonialism: Burma… I’m sorry, Myanmar. Or... Burma? This was one name change that
was a little more on the controversial side, and is not universally recognised.
The country gained its independence from the British in 1948 as the Union of Burma, and
in 1962 adopted an ideology known as the “Burmese Way to Socialism” after a coup d’etat
led by Ne Win, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. This period of the country’s history
was marked by totalitarianism, military rule, and isolationism.
In the late 80’s the country found itself in economic crisis. This was further exacerbated
by the still-in-charge Ne Win’s decision to withdraw most of the recently issued banknotes
without warning or the possibility of exchange, leaving just the 45 and 90 notes and wiping
out the savings of millions of Burmese. Why did he do this? Because the number 9 was his
lucky number and those were the only two banknotes that were divisible by 9. Yes, I’m serious.
This contributed to the 8-8-88 Uprising, because it began on the 8th of August, 1988, eventually
leading to the ousting of Ne Win. Seems like 8 was a luckier number than 9. The military
junta led by Saw Maung assumed control of the country.
The following year, his government declared the new name of the country to be the Republic
of the Union of Myanmar, as “Burma” was considered a lingering vestige of colonialism.
Although, Burma and Myanmar actually both have the same etymological roots, and actually
both refer to the same thing - the majority ethnicity in the country, the Bamar people.
The only difference between the two is the formality of the words, with “Burma” being
considered more colloquial, while “Myanmar” is more official and formal.
Saw Maung’s government promised free elections, but rejected the results after they didn’t
get the desired outcome. This, coupled with the fact that it was heavily involved in a
wide range of human rights abuses, resulted in very few countries and organizations viewing
the name change as legitimate.
Of course, today the country has a new government, and Burma and Myanmar are used somewhat interchangeably.
In fact, the country’s own State Counsellor has even stated that foreigners are free to
use either name.
Moving on… and, of course, it’s not just because of colonialism that a country might
prefer to have others refer to it differently than they always have. An example of this
would the country of Iran, which was historically known as “Persia” in the West. The name
Persia first came to the West via Greek, from the Old Persian word “Parsa”, referring
to an area of Iran which today is known as Fars. While the main ethnic group in Iran
came from this region (hence the most spoken language of Iran “Farsi”), the name “Iran”
for the region of the country as a whole has been used for perhaps as many as 2000 years
by the local population. In 1935, the Shah of Iran politely requested that other countries
refer to the country as Iran instead of Persia. Now, some names don’t necessarily change,
but the way that we interpret the names from the original languages into our own, does.
This was the case for many place names in Chinese, and why we now refer the country’s
capital as “Beijing”, and not Peking, as it was previously known in English. Other
examples include Canton to Guangdong, and Nanking to Nanjing. These changes are due
to the newer system of the Romanisation of Chinese characters, known as “Hanyu Pinyin”.
The older transliterations are the from what’s known as “Postal Romanisation”, a system
that was developed by the Qing Dynasty’s Imperial Post Office at the beginning of the
20th century.
In a related but slightly different scenario, the Czech Republic did not change its official
name, but designated itself the short-form name “Czechia”. This is because the country
has always gone by its official title, and has never had a common short-form name in
English. This is quite unusual, given that very few countries actually go by their official
title. Take France, for example. Its official name is the French Republic, but of course,
in at all but the most official circumstances, it just gets called “France”. Likewise,
there’s: Russia - the Russian Federation, and Italy - the Italian Republic, and so on.
So while the “Czech Republic” remains the country’s official name, the government
has been trying to encourage others to refer to them in everyday conversation as “Czechia”,
which is a direct translation of the Czech name for the country, Česko.
Similarly, there are cases where countries that are typically referred to by a translation
of their name want to go by their official name in their own language. Probably the most
obvious example of this would be the country commonly referred to in English as the Ivory
Coast. In 1986, they requested that the international community use the official, French name Côte
d'Ivoire, and that the name not be translated it into any other languages. Of course, many
people still do.
There’s also Cape Verde, which now goes by Cabo Verde… which is obviously a much
more minor change given that “Verde” was already in the country’s language of Portuguese,
meaning “green”.
Finally, the small Southeastern Asian nation commonly referred to in English as East Timor
also went down this route recently, and declared it should be referred to by its official,
partly Portuguese name of “Timor-Leste” in all languages. Oddly enough though, “Timor”
derives from Indonesian language, also meaning “east”.... so, the country actually has
what’s known as a tautological name, literally meaning “East East”.
Of course, there are plenty of countries whose names come from different places in different
languages who have made no effort to change this. Germany is a good example - the country
is called “Deutschland” in German.
“Deutschland” derives from an Old High German word which originally meant "of the
people". This word actually did find its way into English, as “Dutch”. However, this
became associated with the Germanic peoples with which the English had the most contact.
This is why people from the Netherlands are called Dutch in English.
“Germany” derives from the Latin “Germania”, which was used to refer to tribes living across
the Rhine in the days of Julius Caesar. Variations of this are used by many other languages,
including Italian, Russian, and Romanian. Some other languages refer to Germany by variations
of “Alemanni”, of course, there are MANY other etymologies for the country as well,
but these three are the most common.
The reason for this, is that Germany as a region, whether ethnic or geographical, existed
for thousands of years before Germany as a unified state came into existent. The name
that’s used in any given place is at least in part a reflection of when or from where
that idea of Germany entered into a given language.
Germany is by no means unique in that its endonym differs from the various exonyms by
which countries refer to them, there are plenty of other examples.
Greece is called “Hellas” in Greek. Actually, in English too, officially at least. The country’s
official title is the “Hellenic Republic”, but obviously it’s almost always referred
to as Greece, which came from Latin, although the etymology is unclear. China is also an
exonym, known in Chinese as Zhōngguó. Literally meaning “Central State”, or “Middle
Kingdom”. This was first used around the time of the Eastern Zhou dynasty.
The process of a country changing its name is no small undertaking, with an almost limitless
number of things that could be needing changed. Road signs, official documents, passports,
textbooks… not to mention every single world map. Of course, at the end of the day, the
name of a country is important to the people who are represented by it - if the name of
a country is consistent with a citizen’s identity, it makes it that much easier...
for them to feel... like they belong.
Now, sticking with endonyms and exonyms… you might wonder how the continents got their
names. Believe it or not, most of them are actually exonyms. But, what if they weren’t?
Looking at that very question is a channel that I starting watching a few months ago,
and who you should definitely start watching too if don’t already: Atlas Pro. These videos
were made as a collaboration between the two of us, and in fact this very topic was his
idea. So go watch his related video, and then binge watch all his other videos too while
you’re at it.
And as always, thanks for watching, and I will see you next time!