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Watchwords: The Czech Republic changes its name

Name changes for countries seem to catch on, sooner or later, but nobody would dream of renaming Persian or Siamese cats.

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Names have power. Parents agonize over the right names for their child; children take gleeful delight in the naming of a pet; big corporations pay enormous sums of money to ensure that a new brand or product enters the marketplace with the right name. As readers of every Montreal newspaper are well aware, the presence or absence of an accent over the letter “e” can speak volumes about this city’s perceived identity.

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Only rarely do countries change their name. Yet in all likelihood, current maps of Europe will soon be out of date. The upheavals that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought major changes in political geography, with the bitter disintegration of Yugoslavia leading to the birth of no fewer than seven small nations. Yet since the last of them, Kosovo, declared independence in 2008, the map of Europe has remained unchanged. (The name of one nation remains in official limbo: an ongoing dispute with Greece means that Macedonia continues to be known at the United Nations as “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.”)

Last month, the leaders of the republic whose capital is Prague announced that from now on, their country will bear a one-word name. It will be, in the Czech language, Česko; in French, Tchéquie; and in English, Czechia. The logic is unassailable: we don’t talk about the French Republic or the German Republic, we talk about France and Germany. Why should we refer to a country by an adjective (“Czech”)? The change has yet to become official, but assuming it goes ahead, there’s reason to believe it will eventually come to seem natural. That has happened, after all, with most other renamings. It’s possible that in English, the process may take longer than usual — for in this language, the sound of “Czechia” is uncomfortably close to “check in,” “chicken,” “cheeky” and “Chechnya.”

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The decision to alter a country’s name does, on occasion, meet wide resistance. It’s now 27 years since the military dictatorship running the southeast Asian nation of Burma declared that henceforth it would go by the name of Myanmar. Only gradually have most Canadian media — The Montreal Gazette included — agreed to accept the change. Many articles and news reports still use phrases like “Myanmar, also known as Burma.” One difficulty with the new name is that “Burmese” happens to fit the English language a lot more easily than the official adjective for the country (“Myanma”) or newly created variants (such as “Myanmarese”).

Speaking of Burmese, I’m confident there are no plans to rename that particular breed of cat, distinguished by its dark and glossy coat. For whatever reason, several of the most familiar types of cat are known by otherwise abandoned names. Nobody, I trust, would dream of renaming Siamese — if they did, the famous song from the Disney film Lady and the Tramp might have to be changed from “We are Siamese if you please” to “We are Thai, tell us why.” Likewise, Abyssinian cats are never described as Ethiopian; Turkish Angoras have not turned into Turkish Ankaras; and the classic breed of long-haired cat continues to be Persian, not Iranian.

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The leaders of the Czech Republic — Czechia, I mean — realize that their country will have different names in different places. That’s true for most European nations: the country that I call Germany, for example, is Allemagne in French, Niemcy in Polish, Tyskland in Danish and Deutschland at home. By contrast, Canada remains Canada in every major language, although in some it starts with a K. Suffering perhaps from Canada envy, in 2013 the government of a small island nation off the west coast of Africa declared that it should no longer be called Cape Verde in English (or Cap-Vert in French); the country’s name, anywhere and everywhere, would be Cabo Verde. Sometimes one name, like one size, fits all.

markabley@sympatico.ca

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