“For some people, it’ll always be Straddie,” a thick Australian accent remarks on the radio. “Straddie” is an abbreviation for Stradbroke Island, in that sanguine way that Aussies abbreviate all serious things from politicians (pollies) to documentaries (docos).

That cheerful abbreviation hides something darker. Many Australian place names were given by people branded as British “explorers”. Some claim that as a misnomer and euphemism: they were actually British invaders. The campaign this month to rename Stradbroke Island (named by British naval “explorer” Captain Henry Rous in 1827, after his father, the Earl of Stradbroke) to its Indigenous Australian name of Minjerribah (meaning “Island in the Sun” in the local Jandai language) reflects 20,000 years of connection to this land by the Quandamooka people, the traditional indigenous owners.

It’s a similar story to the journey that saw Ayers Rock (named after the South Australian premier Sir Henry Ayers by European “explorer” William Gosse in 1873) re-named Uluru/Ayers Rock in 1993 to reflect the handback of the land to the Anangu people that occurred in 1985.

There are few identity crises as dramatic as a country, island or city re-branding. Geographical nomenclature is steeped in political, cultural, racial and linguistic tensions. That’s why a small, sunny island off the Queensland coast changing its name from one of white privilege and entitlement to the evocative imagery captured by the English translation of a beautifully mellifluous, almost onomatopoeic Indigenous Australian word (say it slowly, Minjerribah, and you can almost taste the sun) is so heartening.

Place name changes can be serious, pedantic, justice-restoring – and even comical.

Burma or Myanmar?

This linguistic debate is confined to English – both words mean the same thing in Burmese, where one is derived from the other. Myanmar is the literary, formal name; Burma the spoken, colloquial variant.

It was more than a linguistic debate for many; which term you used depended on your political bias towards the country’s struggle for democracy. Some claim the formal re-name, Myanmar, was used by those soft on the unelected military regime and was a form of government censorship from the original people’s term, Burma. Others said adopting the formal re-name was an attempt by the junta to break from the British colonial past.

The UN, France and Japan used Myanmar but the US and UK used Burma because they refused to accept the legitimacy of an unelected military regime to change the country’s official name in 1989. Barack Obama has since used both out of diplomatic courtesy. Indeed, until a change in policy last year, the Guardian itself advised its writers to refer to the country as Burma.



Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the Burmese pro-democracy movement, said this year that whether you use the old or new name no longer matters: “I use Burma very often because I’m used to it. But it doesn’t mean I require others to do that. And I’ll make an effort to say Myanmar from time to time so you all feel comfortable. This is what diplomacy, I think, is all about. We have to learn to accommodate each other.”

Other countries that have changed names include Southern and Northern Rhodesia (British protectorates that respectively became Zimbabwe and Zambia), Persia (now Iran), Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and New Spain (Mexico).



This year, leaders in the Czech Republic, fed up with their country’s complicated full name, made a bid to change it to one three-syllable word in time for the Olympics. It’s a country in constant metamorphosis – from Bohemia to Czechoslovakia to Czech Republic and now: Czechia.

The portmanteau city

Budapest is a portmanteau because it used to be two cities – Buda and Pest, either side of the Danube river. Or, more precisely, three – Buda, Pest, and Óbuda. They united to form the geographical portmanteau in 1873.

Other cities that have changed their official names include Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Leningrad (back to St Petersburg), Bombay (now Mumbai), New Amsterdam (New York), Edo (Tokyo) and Christiania (Oslo).

Scholars’ Walk or Scholars Walk?

A Cambridge council spokesperson rued the day the authority followed a “bureaucratic guideline” to cut apostrophes from place names for “clarity”. It led to the prospect of the city’s Scholars’ Walk becoming grammatically incorrect – although literally quite apt. The council later revoked the decision and apostrophes were restored. Phew.

Titswobble Road and Curly Dick Road

Both descriptive cheeky road names came under threat from the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales, Australia, for their “likelihood to offend”. The attempted change was called out as fun-spoiling officiousness.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch

Originally named Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll, the Welsh town changed its name in the 19th century to encourage tourism, becoming the longest place name in Europe. It translates as: “St Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St Tysilio of the red cave.” It’s still shorter than the average German noun.

Harrodsville

It sounds like a name-change of Knightsbridge lobbied for by Mohamed Al Fayed. But the reverse is true: it was the brief re-naming of New Zealand town Otorohanga in 1986 in support of local restaurateur Henry Harrod, after London’s Harrods – then owned by Al Fayed – threatened to sue him over the name of his small business on the other side of the world.

So what place names are likely to be the source of strife in the future? If Scotland secedes, the UK itself could be the next to change what it calls itself. Creative suggestions, anyone?

Gary Nunn is a regular contributor to Mind your language @garynunn1