Geographical renaming is the changing of the name of a geographical feature or area, which ranges from the change of a street name to a change to the name of a country. Places are also sometimes assigned dual names for various reasons.
Background A change might see a completely different name being adopted or may only be a slight change in spelling. Some names are changed locally but the new names are not recognised by other countries, especially when there is a difference in language. Other names may not be officially recognised but remain in common use. Many places have different names in different languages, and a change of language in official or general use has often resulted in what is arguably a change of name. There are many reasons to undertake renaming, with political motivation being the primary cause; for example many places in the former Soviet Union and its satellites were renamed to honour Stalin. Sometimes a place reverts to its former name (see, for example, de-Stalinization).
One of the most common reasons for a country changing its name is newly acquired national independence. When borders are changed, sometimes due to a country splitting or two countries joining, the names of the relevant areas can change. This, however, is more the creation of a different entity than an act of geographical renaming.
Place names may revert to an earlier name; for instance in Australia, pre-colonial names established thousands of years ago by Aboriginal peoples have been reclaimed as official names. Examples include K'gari (formerly Fraser Island and various other names since settlement), and Uluru / Ayers Rock, where a dual naming strategy was adopted but it is now commonly known as Uluru.
Other more unusual reasons for renaming have included getting rid of an inappropriate or embarrassing name, or as part of a sponsorship deal or publicity stunt.
In some cases established institutions preserve the old names of the renamed places in their names, such as the Pusan National University in Busan, South Korea; the Peking University in Beijing; Bombay Stock Exchange, IIT Bombay and the Bombay High Court in Mumbai; University of Madras, Madras Stock Exchange, the Madras High Court, and IIT Madras in Chennai; the University of Malaya, Keretapi Tanah Melayu, in Malaysia; and SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organization), the ruling party of Namibia. Often the older name will persist in colloquial expressions. For example, the dish known in English as "Peking duck" retained that name even when the Chinese capital changed its transliteration to "Beijing".
Romanisation Changes in romanisation systems can result in minor or major changes in spelling in the Roman alphabet for geographical entities, even without any change in name pronunciation or spelling in the local alphabet or other writing system. Names in non-Roman characters can also be spelled very differently when Romanised in different European languages.
Chinese names China developed and adopted the Pinyin romanisation system in February 1958 in place of previous systems such as the postal romanization and Wade–Giles. Many Chinese geographical entities (and associated entities named after geographical names) thus had their English names changed. The changes sometimes appear drastic, since it is sometimes the case that the former romanisations were derived from Cantonese—the common language in British-held Hong Kong—while the newer romanisations are derived entirely from Mandarin. However, the pronunciation in Mandarin has mostly stayed the same both before and after the change. Pinyin was adopted by the International Organization for Standardization in 1982 and officially adopted in Singapore (resulting in several geographical name changes of its own). However it is usually not applied in the autonomous regions of the PRC (e.g. Lhasa, Ürümqi, Hohhot, Xigazê, Ili, Altay, Kaxgar, Hulunbuir, Erenhot, with a notable exception being place names in Ningxia, whose native Hui people speak Mandarin as their native language) and has not resulted in any geographical name change in the SARs of Hong Kong and Macau. It is adopted only in parts of Taiwan, particularly within Taipei and other Kuomintang controlled cities and counties, in a recent push to adopt Pinyin by the Kuomintang government.
Examples of changes:
In the People's Republic of China Peking → Beijing Canton → Guangdong and Guangzhou Nanking → Nanjing Sian → Xi'an Chengtu → Chengdu Chungking → Chongqing Tientsin → Tianjin Sinkiang → Xinjiang Heilungkiang → Heilongjiang Szechuan → Sichuan
In the Republic of China (Taiwan) Shih-lin → Shilin Chung-cheng → Zhongzheng Tamsui → Danshui (now reverted)
In Singapore Peck San → Bishan Ao Kang → Hougang Nee Soon → Yishun
Korean names
The introduction of the Revised Romanization of Korean in place of the McCune–Reischauer system on 7 July 2000 by the South Korean government has resulted in a string of changes to geographical names. The system is not used by North Korea. Examples of changes include: Inch'ŏn → Incheon Kyŏngju → Gyeongju Pusan → Busan Taegu → Daegu Taejŏn → Daejeon
Endonyms and exonyms For geographical entities with multiple pre-existing names in one or more languages, an exonym or endonym may gradually be substituted and used in the English language.
Many countries have intentionally had their common English names officially changed to the local name, such as Côte d'Ivoire and Timor-Leste's translations to their local languages, or Persia requesting to be known by the endonym Iran, and Mesopotamia being changed to Iraq. Transfer of a city between countries speaking different languages can result in seeming changes of name. Changes can be as slight as Straßburg (Germany) and Strasbourg (France). Some are less subtle: Thessaloniki, built in 4th century BC in ancient Macedonia became Selanik during the Ottoman Empire and has sometimes been referred to as Salonica, and is now Thessaloniki in Greece; Pilsen in the Austro-Hungarian Empire became Plzeň in Czechoslovakia; Chișinău, now the capital of Moldova, was in Russian and Soviet times part of Romania and known as Kishinev (the latter name is used in English in certain historical contexts, e.g. Kishinev pogrom). Some are translations; Karlsbad become Karlovy Vary. When the formerly-German city of Stettin came under Polish rule, it became known in English by its Polish name of Szczecin. But when Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech he still spoke of the city by its German name instead of its contemporary Polish name even though Churchill fully accepted the transfer of the formerly-German city to Poland, probably because it is German phonology, not Polish, that is closer to English. The pattern is far from uniform, and it takes time. The Soviet Union replaced German city names in the former East Prussia that became the Kaliningrad Oblast and Japanese place names in southern Sakhalin Island with Russian names unrelated to the old German and Japanese place names after annexing them in the aftermath of World War II. The military junta changed the official English name of Burma to Myanmar in 1988, even though both were pre-existing names which originated from the Burmese language and used interchangeably depending on contexts (see Names of Myanmar). Decolonisation in India saw a trend to change the established English names of cities to the names in the local language. Since then, changes have included Chennai (from Madras in August 1996), Kolkata (from Calcutta in January 2001) and Mumbai (from Bombay in 1995), amongst many others. The People's Republic of China, upon its founding and new nationalities policy, changed the names of cities in ethnic minority regions from sometimes patronising Chinese language names to those of the native language. For example, it changed Dihua to Ürümqi and Zhenxi to Barkol. After the occupation of the communist North Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War, the city of Saigon changed its name to Ho Chi Minh City (after the late leader of North Vietnam Ho Chi Minh) to symbolize the north's victory in the war. Despite the official name change, however, many older Americans (especially those who fought in the Vietnam War) still refer to the city as Saigon. Even many Vietnamese still refer to the city as Saigon, as it is shorter. The name of the river, however, remains unchanged, the Saigon River.
Changes resulting from splits and mergers
Czechoslovakia got its name from the agglomeration of the Czech and Slovak peoples in 1918. It peacefully dissolved into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic in 1993. Yugoslavia ("Land of the South Slavs") was originally Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, created by joining Kingdom of Serbia, Kingdom of Montenegro and parts of Austro-Hungarian Empire inhabited by South Slavs (today comprising Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Vojvodina (i.e. the Northern part of modern Serbia)). It became Yugoslavia in 1929. It subsequently split into the modern states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro between 1991 and 2006. Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence in 2008. The Gambia and Senegal became one as Senegambia Confederation 1982–1989. Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined to become Tanzania. Egypt and Syria were briefly joined as the United Arab Republic. Malaya merged with the northern Borneo territories of Sabah and Sarawak, and Singapore to form Malaysia in 1963. Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965. Various places split by compass directions, such as North and South Dakota, West Virginia and Virginia, North and South Korea, East and West Germany, South Sudan and Sudan, etc. South Yemen was previously known as the Aden Protectorate and by other names. Some of these were subsequently unified, such as Germany and Yemen.
List of significant name changes
This is a list of internationally important or significant renamings.
Countries The British government records changes of countries' names.
Pindotetama → Pindorama/Tapuiretama (disputed) → Ilha de Vera Cruz (1500) → Terra de Santa Cruz (1500) → Portuguese Brazil (1530) → Dutch Brazil (1630–1654) → United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (1815) → Empire of Brazil (1822) → Republic of the United States of Brazil (1889) → Brazil (1930) Sabara or Sabana (disputed) → Temasek (unknown) → Singapura (1299 or 1389) → British Singapore (1819) → Syonan-to (Syonan Island) (1942) → Colony of Singapore (1945) → State of Singapore (1959) → State of Singapore (Malaysia) (1963) → Singapore (1965) New Spain → Mexico (1821) Upper Peru → Bolivia (1825) Republic of the Seven United Netherlands → Batavian Republic (1795) → Batavian Commonwealth (1801) → Kingdom of Holland (1806) → Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands (1813) → United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815) → Kingdom of the Netherlands (1830) New Grenada → Colombia (1819) → New Granada (1831) → Colombia (1863) Dahomey → French Dahomey (1894) → Republic of Dahomey (1958) → Benin (1975) Spanish East Indies → Philippines (1898) Eastern Bengal and Assam (1905) → East Bengal (1947) → East Pakistan (1955) → Bangladesh (1971) German Southwest Africa → Southwest Africa (1915) → Namibia (1968) Kingdom of Great Britain → United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801) → United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1927) Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd → Saudi Arabia (1932)