by What’s in a name? Well, since it’s Christmas, let’s talk Turkey – or rather, Turkey.
Last year the United Nations agreed to President Erdogan’s request that his country be called Turkey. Other than in official documents, not much has affected him – but from Erdogan’s point of view, he is pushing Turkey’s name into international institutions, leaving his nationalist credentials burning at home.
In fact, the country did not change its name. It has been Turkey since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, but the English “Turkey” has long been used abroad. It is thought that Erdogan wanted to remove his country’s connection with the big bird that would eat a lot at Christmas.
Similarly, feathers were ruffled in September at the G20 summit when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat behind a sign labeled “Bharat” – a Sanskrit proverb that refers to a part of the country that lies between the mountains and the sea. Modi has long argued that the name “India” is linked to colonialism – and that change would follow the logical process that has seen cities like Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, and Mumbai, once Bombay, lose their colonial names – but critics have argued. that it is a political play intended to appeal to Modi’s Hindu majoritarianism.
Thus, Shakespeare may have written “What we call a rose/By any other name smells as sweet”, but the adage seems far less applicable to nations than to flowers (and Montagues). As Erdogan and Modi know – names matter. They are the building blocks of identity and can represent the country’s heritage, culture, identity and aspirations.
But of course, Turkey and India are far from trailblazers in the post-colonial name change game. The French may have named the region Upper Volta, for example, but by 1982 the people preferred Burkina Faso – a name derived from local languages. Likewise, in 1964, it became the Democratic Republic of the Congo-Leopoldville, and the inhabitants of its capital, Leopoldville, preferred not to remember one of the most brutal colonialists of all, King Leopold II, who renamed it Kinshasa soon after. .
There are similar stories all over the world. Siam became Thailand, Burma is now Myanmar. After the Portuguese rechristened Ceylon in the 1500s (which became Ceylon when the British arrived), India’s island neighbor probably returned to its original name – the Sanskrit “Lanka”, meaning “island” – in the 1970s, before it was added. “Sri” (“Beautiful”) in 1972.
And, of course, spelling is also important. You may recall that shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government insisted that its capital be transliterated as Kyiv, not Kiev, to reflect Ukrainian tradition, not Russian.
So how do you change the name of an entire country? Firstly, you will need to formally notify the UN, and advise how to write the new name in the six official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) . Then, replacing all your flags, official documents such as passports, ID cards, and driver’s licenses, as well as documents related to international treaties, is often an expensive undertaking, which creates an illness ones where disputing countries demand renegotiation, because the original version was agreed. with Country X not Country Y. All this can take time – just ask Sri Lanka, where official documents, currency and websites had references to Ceylon until as recently as 2011.
After that? Well, some changes are more successful than others.
In India and around the world, many still refer to Mumbai as Bombay, and the name is old enough for its institutions – the Bombay Stock Exchange and the Bombay High Court.
Likewise, you won’t hear anyone in North Macedonia refer to it by the name it adopted in 2019: the change – from Macedonia – was made to resolve a dispute with Greece, which has a province of the same name, and to go around Greek veto when she joined NATO.
Then we have Czechia – work in progress. Officially the country remains the “Czech Republic”, but it wants to be called the Czech Republic in international forums because it is snappier – good branding, if you will. It also makes football chants better.
And after all, nothing lasts forever. Paris was Lutetia (from the less flattering Latin for “swamp”), Toronto was York, Istanbul was Constantinople, New York was New Amsterdam. Borders move, and so do names – and while Turkey may be the latest, it certainly won’t be the last.
