December 18 - Anniversary of a Name Change

nPosted on December 18, 2017

Key points

nToday’s historical anniversary happened a really, REALLY long time ago: on this date in 1271.

nKnow how long ago that was?

It was more than seven centuries ago! To be exact, it was 746 years ago!

nWhat happened was that the emperor of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan, renamed his empire Yuan.

nHis empire covered about a fifth of the Earth’s inhabited land surface, stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea, and from Siberia to what is now Afghanistan.

nThe Yuan dynasty wasn’t truly a force in that entire area, though, but it did rule over a sizable chunk of land, including what is now Mongolia, China, and Korea, plus bits of other present-day nations here and there.

nYou know how people always say that history is written by the victors? (In other words, if you win a war, you’re in a position to spread your own version of that war far and wide.)

Well, it is not just “history” that victors get to write – it’s NAMES. Whoever discovers a planet or element or species of lizard or whatever else is generally the one who gets to name it. Whoever conquers a region of land gets to name the lakes and rivers and mountains – and the region itself, as well.

nActually, just because a leader or conqueror chooses a name, other people don’t necessarily always adopt it. Even though many people in the English-speaking world and in Europe recognize the Yuan Dynasty, others use the term “Mongol dynasty of China.”

nHere are a few other examples of names not being entirely accepted by others:

The Southeast Asian nation of Burma was taken over by an unelected military government that went on to change the nation’s name to Myanmar. Some people in the country resisted the renaming and have pointed out that the government is not legitimate – it was not elected democratically. The United States and the United Kingdom insist on calling the country Burma…but many, many nations and even the United Nations have accepted the name Myanmar.

nOther nations whose rulers have insisted on particular names, but whose names are not accepted by the world – or at least not fully accepted by the entire world – include Taiwan and Northern Cyprus.

If you have never seen this flag
before, you’re not the only one.

This is the flag of the nation-that-
doesn’t-exist Atlantium.

nThen there are all the countries that don’t exist. A man named Nick Middleton created an atlas with just some of the many places in the world that have fixed populations, a government, a flag, and often a currency – all the things we associate with nations – but that are not accepted as separate, independent nations. Some examples are Atlantium, Christiania, and Lakotah.

nAnd there are bunches of bunches of countries whose names in other languages are not always the same as their name in their own language. This seems unnecessarily complicated to me, and I kind of wish that we could all just move to using nation’s own names for their nation, with their own correct spelling.

Buuuttt…if we did that, think how many bajillions of documents and signs and websites and maps and and and and and would have to be changed. It would be kind of a gigantor mess, I guess.

If we used countries’ own names for their nations, we English speakers would not have that much difficulty with some European nations. La France, România, and Portugal are pretty much identical, and we would have no difficulty with Danmark, Italia, or Nederland.

nCan you figure out Norge, Ísland, and Polska?

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nIt gets more difficult when nations’ names start with a completely different letter than our English versions. Do you know what España, Deutschland, and Éire are? How about Österreich, Sverige, and Magyarország? Suomi? Elláda?

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nSwitzerland is a tricky one, because that nation has four (count ’em! FOUR!) official languages, and the name for the nation is different in each! Here are the languages and the names for Switzerland:

nGerman – Schweiz

nFrench – Suisse

nItalian – Svizzera

nRomansh – Svizra

You know all those times when countries are identified by a two-letter country code? Switzerland’s country code is – get this! – CH. All those official languages, and all of the names start with an S…so what’s with the country code CH?

nWell, Switzerland is Helvetica in Latin, and Switzerland’s official name is (in English) Swiss Confederation, so the country code is based on the name Confoederatio Helvetica!