Географиялық атаулардың өзгеруі

Change of name of a geographical entity

Geographical renaming is the changing of the name of a geographical feature or area, which ranges from the change of a street name to a change to the name of a country. Places are also sometimes assigned dual names for various reasons.

A change might see a completely different name being adopted or may only be a slight change in spelling. Some names are changed locally but the new names are not recognised by other countries, especially when there is a difference in language. Other names may not be officially recognised but remain in common use. Many places have different names in different languages, and a change of language in official or general use has often resulted in what is arguably a change of name. There are many reasons to undertake renaming, with political motivation being the primary cause; for example many places in the former Soviet Union and its satellites were renamed to honour Stalin. Sometimes a place reverts to its former name (see, for example, de Stalinization). One of the most common reasons for a country changing its name is newly acquired independence. When borders are changed, sometimes due to a country splitting or two countries joining, the names of the relevant areas can change. This, however, is more the creation of a different entity than an act of geographical renaming. Place names may revert to an earlier name; for instance in Australia, pre colonial names established thousands of years ago by Aboriginal peoples have been reclaimed as official names. Examples include K'gari (formerly Fraser Island and various other names since settlement), and Uluru / Ayers Rock, where a dual naming strategy was adopted but it is now commonly known as Uluru. Other more unusual reasons for renaming have included getting rid of an inappropriate or embarrassing name, or as part of a sponsorship deal or publicity stunt. In some cases established institutions preserve the old names of the renamed places in their names, such as the Pusan National University in Busan, South Korea; the Peking University in Beijing; Bombay Stock Exchange, IIT Bombay and the Bombay High Court in Mumbai; University of Madras, Madras Stock Exchange, the Madras High Court, and IIT Madras in Chennai; the University of Malaya, Keretapi Tanah Melayu, in Malaysia; and SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organization), the ruling party of Namibia. Often the older name will persist in colloquial expressions. For example, the dish known in English as "Peking duck" retained that name even when the Chinese capital changed its transliteration to "Beijing".

Changes in romanisation systems can result in minor or major changes in spelling in the Roman alphabet for geographical entities, even without any change in name pronunciation or spelling in the local alphabet or other writing system. Names in non Roman characters can also be spelled very differently when Romanised in different European languages.

For geographical entities with multiple pre existing names in one or more languages, an exonym or endonym may gradually be substituted and used in the English language. Many countries have intentionally had their common English names officially changed to the local name, such as Côte d'Ivoire and Timor Leste's translations to their local languages, or Persia requesting to be known by the endonym Iran, and Mesopotamia being changed to Iraq. Transfer of a city between countries speaking different languages can result in seeming changes of name. Changes can be as slight as Straßburg (Germany) and Strasbourg (France). Some are less subtle: Thessaloniki, built in 4th century BC in ancient Macedonia became Selanik in the Ottoman Empire and sometimes being referred to as Salonica, now Thessaloniki in Greece; Pilsen in the Austro Hungarian Empire became Plzeň in Czechoslovakia; Chișinău, now the capital of Moldova, was in Russian and Soviet times part of Romania and known as Kishinev (the latter name is used in English in certain historical contexts, e. g. Kishinev pogrom). Some are translations; Karlsbad become Karlovy Vary. When the formerly German city of Danzig came under Polish rule, it became known in English by its Polish name of Gdańsk. But when Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech he still spoke of a city in Poland by its German name (Stettin) instead of its contemporary Polish name Szczecin even though Churchill fully accepted the transfer of the formerly German city to Poland, probably because it is German phonology, not Polish, that is closer to English. The pattern is far from uniform, and it takes time. The Soviet Union replaced German city names in the former East Prussia that became the Kaliningrad Oblast and Japanese place names in southern Sakhalin Island with Russian names unrelated to the old German and Japanese place names after annexing them in the aftermath of World War II. The military junta changed the official English name of Burma to Myanmar in 1988, even though both were pre existing names which originated from the Burmese language and used interchangeably depending on contexts (see Names of Myanmar). Decolonisation in India saw a trend to change the established English names of cities to the names in the local language. Since then, changes have included Chennai (from Madras in August 1996), Kolkata (from Calcutta in January 2001) and Mumbai (from Bombay in 1995), amongst many others. The People's Republic of China, upon its founding and new nationalities policy, changed the names of cities in ethnic minority regions from sometimes patronising Chinese language names to those of the native language. For example, it changed Dihua to Ürümqi and Zhenxi to Barkol. After the occupation of the communist North Vietnam at the end of the Vietnam War, the city of Saigon changed its name to Ho Chi Minh City (after the late leader of North Vietnam Ho Chi Minh) to symbolize the north's victory in the war. Despite the official name change, however, many older Americans (especially those who fought in the Vietnam War) still refer to the city as Saigon. Even many Vietnamese still refer to the city as Saigon. The name of the river, however, remains unchanged, the Saigon River.

This is a list of internationally important or significant renamings.