Why Countries Change Their Names

in favor 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 Greece took issue with s given the Macedonia was a historically Greek Kingdom and indeed there still exists a region of Greece today called Macedonia an agreement was made for the country to change its name despite a lot of protests from the locals to the Republic of North Macedonia the name change was made in part to keep the peace with her neighbor which in turn would allow the country to begin as a session to the EU and NATO s membership to both had always been blocked by Greece it turns out the country's changing their name is not actually as uncommon as you may expect a name is used for identification and this 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 may 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 his name to s WA tini marking the 50th anniversary of the country's and dependents the name change was made partly to avoid confusion with this 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 Swasey name and that since the country moved from an exonym to an end on him an exonym is an external name for a geographic location whereas an end name is an internal one this kind of change from an exonym to an engineer has been especially common in countries trying to distance themselves from the colonial past in particular in Africa where the process is known as African ization 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 renaming itself gained upon independence and moving over to Asia is another country that sought to get away from the remnants of colonialism Burma I'm sorry Myanmar or Burma this is one name changed it was a little more in the controversial side and is not universally recognized 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'état led by Nene when the chief of staff of the Armed Forces this period of the country's history was marked by totalitarianism military rule and isolationism and the late 1980s the country found itself in economic crisis this was further exacerbated by the still in charge knee when's decision to withdraw most of the recently issued banknotes without warning or the possibility of exchange leaving just a 45 and 90 notes wiping out the savings of millions of Burmese why did he do this because the number name was his lucky number and those were the only two banknotes that were divisible by name yes I'm serious this contributed to the 8888 uprising because it began on the 8th of August 1988 eventually leading to the ousting of me when seems like 8 was a lucky number the name military hunter led by Sol Mao a sim control of the country the following year has government declared the new name for the country to be the republic of the union of Myanmar as Burma was considered a lingering vestige of colonialism although Burma Myanmar actually both found the same ethological roots and actually both refer to the same thing the majority ethnicity in the country the bomber 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 so Long's government promised free elections but rejected the results after they didn't get the desired outcome this coupled with the fact that was very 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 councilor has even stated that foreigners are free to use either name for the country moving on and of course it's not just because of colonialism that a country may prefer to have others refer to it differently than they always have an example of this would be 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 here on which today is known as FAR's well the main ethnic group in Iran came from this region hence the most spoken language in 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 the other country for fair 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 enter our own does this was the case for many place names in Chinese and why we know refer to the country's capital as Beijing and not Peking as it was previously known in English other examples includes can torn to Guan dong and Nanking to nanjing these changes are due to the new system of the romanization of chinese characters known as Hanyu pinyin the older transliterations are from what's known as postal romanization 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 didn't know it changes official name but designated itself the short Foreign 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 as the French Republic but of course in all what the most efficient circumstances it just gets called France likewise there's Russia the Russian Federation and esli 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 at a rate translation of the czech name for the country chesco similarly there are cases where countries that are typically referred to by translation of their name want to go out whether 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 is the official French name Cote d'Ivoire and that the name not be translated 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 Verdi was already an the country's language of Portuguese meaning green finally the small southeastern Asian nation commonly referred to in English as East Timor also went dentistry recently and the clear that should be referred to by its official partly Portuguese name of Timor Leste in all languages oddly enough though team word derives from Indonesian language also meaning East so the country actually has was 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 germany deutschland derives from an old high german word which originally meant of the people the word actually dead 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 derived from the Latin Germania which was used to refer to tribes living across the rein in the days of Julius Caesar variations of this are used by many other languages as well including Italian Russian and Romanian some other languages refer to Germany by variations of allamani of course there are many other etymology for the country as well but these are the three 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 existence the name is used in a given place is at least in part a flexion of when or from where the idea of Germany entered into a given language Germany is by no means unique and that it's in the name defers from the various excellence by which countries refer to them there are plenty of other examples Greece is called Hellas and Greek actually in English too officially at least the country's official title as the Hellenic Republic but obviously is almost always referred to as Greece which came from Latin but this etymology is unclear China is also an exonym known in Chinese as Zhang wall literally meaning central state or metal Kingdom as was first used around the time of the Eastern jewel dynasty the process of a country changing his 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 our country is consistent with the citizens identity makes it that much easier for them to feel like they belong now stacking within the rims and eggs names you may wonder how the continents got their names Bolivar nor most of them are actually eggs in hymns but what if they weren't looking at that very question as a channel that I started watching a few months ago and who you should definitely start washing too if you're doing already atlas Proulx 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 Benj watch all those other videos too while you're at it and as always thanks for watching and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: WonderWhy

Views: 1,296,296

Keywords: macedonia, burma, myanmar, change name

Id: cX98tg6D2og

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019