When politicians play the place-name game
By Shashi Tharoor
Thursday, October 31, 2002

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo:   A recent article in this space decrying the Indian habit of renaming cities elicited some mail pointing out that the practice was international. Who could forget, after all, that just five years ago Zaire, a name the world got used to only after 1970, is now Congo again, or more accurately the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

The name "Zaire" - given to the country, its principal river and its near-worthless currency - was associated irremediably with the reviled President Mobutu, who had invented it in a burst of Africanization a few years after taking power in the former Belgian Congo. Unfortunately, the name had no roots in the Congo itself - it applied to an ancient kingdom in what is today Angola.

The same spuriousness affected the former Joseph Desiré Mobutu's reinvention of himself as Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga. This meant "the invincible warrior who, because of his endurance and his indomitable will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving a trail of fire in his wake."

A different impulse lay behind the decision of the rulers of the former French colony of Upper Volta to rename their country Burkina Faso, "Country of Incorruptible Men." Just as a wish is sometimes father to the thought, so also the name of a country might advertise what its rulers hope it will be. This is why "democratic" or "united" feature so often in the names of countries which might not always qualify for either adjective.

More often, the desire is simply to reject a colonial-era appellation for a name harking back to the indigenous past. Thus, in Africa, Dahomey became Benin, Northern Rhodesia became Zambia, and Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe; even names with an African origin were recast, making Nyasaland into Malawi and Bechuanaland into Botswana. Upon independence, the British-ruled Gold Coast cast off its commodification and became Ghana, though the Ivory Coast, formerly French, retained its label.

Similar developments occurred outside Africa, with the New Hebrides becoming Vanuatu and the Gilbert and Ellis Islands collectively taking on the appellation Kiribati. They were following the example of Ceylon, which became Sri Lanka in the early 1970s.

Cambodia was rebaptized Democratic Kampuchea by the Khmer Rouge, only to see it revert to Cambodia when a new government took over in Phnom Penh.

Second thoughts about new names are not just a Third World phenomenon. Cape Canaveral, the rocket-launching site in Florida, became Cape Kennedy in a tribute to John F. Kennedy, but was reborn as Canaveral soon thereafter. That reflected the waning fortunes of the late president in the posthumous political popularity polls.

For the same reason, names honoring colonial British statesmen in Southern Africa have been scrapped, turning Salisbury into Harare and Blantyre into Lilongwe - though, intriguingly, Ladysmith in South Africa survives.

Equally unsurprising, Stalingrad has gone back to being Volgograd, and a host of Russian towns renamed in the Soviet era for heroes of the revolution, from Sverdlovsk to Gorky and most famously Leningrad, have reverted to their pre-Communist names.

The processes of dramatic political change this reflects were summed up in an anecdote I first heard in 1990, about an old man on a park bench being interviewed by a journalist.

"I have lived in this city all my life," the old man says proudly. "And I'll die here, too."

"Where were you born?" the journalist asks. "In St. Petersburg," the old man replies.

"Where did you grow up?" "In Petrograd."

"Where do you live now?" "In Leningrad."

"Where will you die?" "In St. Petersburg."

That was meant to be a joke about the changing history of Russia. But within a year, the magic of names asserted itself. It came true.

Shashi Tharoor's most recent novel is "Riot." He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune