Surely one of the most striking measures of the new Trump administration has been the change of name of the Gulf of Mexico, which in the United States will officially be called “Gulf of America.” This is not the sole government having recently changed place names: two and a half years ago, Turkey decided to change its official name to “Türkiye,” which is the name of the country in Turkish (and in the process, they got rid of the inconvenient name “Turkey,” which in English also stands for an edible bird). Recently, Brazil surprised the world by announcing that it would stop promoting itself internationally with its English name “Brazil” and instead use its own Portuguese denomination “Brasil” (which in some languages won’t be surprising because it is written with an “s”, but it will shock the English-speaking people who read it).

So, what can we make of this all? We see that what the Romans - who produced a lot of place names as they expanded their empire – said is true: “nomen est omen”, that is, the name “marks” the object. That this is so, that the name makes the thing, we may see it in the place names of old colonial countries which refer directly to the metropolis: Mérida (Venezuela), Guadalajara (Mexico), Manchester County (Australia) and a long etcetera. Or it may also be seen in colonial place names comprising the adjective “new”, which turns the colonial place into a mere extension of its metropolitan equivalent: New York, New Orleans (in original French, Nouvelle Orléans), Nueva Granada, New South Wales...

Totalitarian regimes have frequently used place names to “mark” the territory and remind the inhabitants who is in charge. For example, in Spain there was a total absence of Catalan, Galician or Basque place names in public spaces during the Franco dictatorship era. Across the world, the names of villages or cities have been renamed or assimilated when there have been political shifts or border changes, without much regard for the residents (BTW Europe is full of such examples, we don't have to go very far to find them).

But multilingual place names are not always a bone of contention: after a union which had lasted several centuries, Finland became independent from Sweden in 1917. This happened in a process of mutual understanding and agreement, so nowadays Finns accept the Swedish place names of their country as part of their own history. Therefore, when I write (from Sweden, where I live) to Finnish colleagues with whom I have some confidence, I sometimes use Swedish place names. For example, I may ask them: “How are things in Uleåborg?” [in Finnish, Oulu]. Or: “How are you all in Tammerfors?” [in Finnish, Tampere]. Or again: “How do you see this project by Åbo technical university?” [in Finnish, Turku]. Not only do they not get upset, but they are amused to see that a non-Scandinavian person knows the Swedish place names of their country.

So, the importance of names (of people or places) is high and emotionally-connoted. That is why place names also express exclusion or inclusion. If we look at the case of Turkey/Türkiye, perhaps getting rid of an inconvenient name is positive, but if this is done using a spelling such as “ü”, which in many languages ​​does not exist or in others is a seldom occurrence, it can be interpreted primarily as wanting to underscore differences. The same may be argued for the case of Brasil/Brazil. In these examples, one may debate about the “degree of differentiation” which is being put to the fore. And it seems that lately the emphasis is put on the differences rather than on promoting commonalities.

Shared geographies are interesting cases: these are spaces with two names, depending on how the concerned countries look at the geographical feature in question: what in Jordan is called the “Gulf of Aqaba” in Israel is known as the “Gulf of Eilat”. In Sweden (for very obvious reasons) the Baltic Sea is called “the eastern sea” [Östersjön], while in Estonia (for identical reasons) it is called “the western sea” [Läänemeri]. It is normal for two different countries to look at geographical marks differently. What should not be acceptable is to manipulate place names for political purposes or to change them without asking the people who live there, who are ultimately the most affected by these changes.

TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE TOPIC…

In English:

PLACE ATTRIBUTES AND COMPANY NAMES: AN EMPIRICAL AND CONCEPTUAL STUDY INTO PUBLIC BRANDING AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMD-03-2023-0023

(How do local marketing campaigns influence the company’s names on a given place?)

In French or English:

NOMMER LES BIENS DU PATRIMOINE MONDIAL: PROCESSUS DE PATRIMONIALISATION ET RÉINVENTION TOPONYMIQUE https://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/19973

(A study about naming strategies around UNESCO monuments in France)

In Portuguese:

TOPONÍMIA, SIMBOLISMO E PODER: ESTUDO DO NOME DOS MUNICÍPIOS DO NORTE DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL https://doi.org/10.5752/P.2318-2962.2022v32n68p324

(A paper examining the origins of the place names in a region in southern Brazil)