Please Select New City Name

"Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say–
People just liked it better that way"

— The Four Lads, "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", re-popularized by They Might Be Giants on Flood

Due to a large number of political events, certain city names have become politically incorrect and have been changed. Naturally, not all the locals will be fond of it. Whether one refers to a location by its old or its new name may be a way of declaring one's political allegiance. A Soviet-era joke has an older Russian filling out a form:

• Where were you born? St. Petersburg.
• Where did you go to school? Petrograd.
• Where do you live now? Leningrad.
• And where would you like to live? St. Petersburg.

(The joke is that they all refer to the same city.)

It's not always for political reasons though. For example, some Chinese place names have simply been changed due to a new method of transliterating their "real" names — neither "Peking" nor "Beijing" is an entirely accurate way of representing the Chinese word, due to language differences, but the latter is considerably closer than the former. Linguistic drift can also change names: The Roman province of Hispania became, over a thousand years later, the nation of España — Spain.

Either way, expect to see some of the old names pop up in Alternate History or Fantasy Counterpart Culture, as evidenced by Istanbul (Not Constantinople). If the new "name" is just a number, it's Airstrip One. If it's named for the ruler, it's Egopolis.

Often a form of Meaningful Rename.

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Examples

Uses in Fiction

Anime and Manga

• ARIA does this to the planet Mars, which is said to have been renamed Aqua after being terraformed.
• The main setting of Higurashi: When They Cry was renamed from Onigafuchi to Hinamizawa, removing the oni ("demon") part of the name — a reference to the villagers' beliefs that they were part demon — in the process.

Comic Books

• Astro City was originally called Romeyn Falls, but was renamed in 1947 to honor Golden Age hero the Astro-Naut, who'd stopped an alien invasion that devastated the city.
• Seattle gets renamed Star City after it's taken over by an Ancient Conspiracy in the Green Arrow (Rebirth) storyline "Rise of Star City". Ollie makes a point of continuing to call it Seattle.
• The Finder arc "Third World" has a city called only "Third World", because it's occupied by several different ethnic groups, each with their own traditional name for it, and none of them will allow any of the others' names to be officially selected.
• According to Superman's Pal: Jimmy Olsen (2019), Metropolis was originally known as New Oberstad in the 17th century. It presumably changed its name at around the same time as New Amsterdam became New York.
• X-Factor (2006): In the future timeline Bishop comes from, JFK Airport has been renamed to BHO Airport sometime in the last eighty years.

Fan Works

• Chasing Dragons:
  • After Tyrosh is sacked by the Abolitionist Alliance and annexed by Braavos, the latter rename it Martyros.
  • After Balon's Rebellion is crushed and the Iron Islands occupied by the mainland, the city of Lordsport is renamed Euronsport in honor of Euron's loyal service to Stannis and his death during the rebellion and made the headquarters of the Order of the Sea (The Order created to police the islands).
• The New Jedi Order: A Vision of Confluence: After Pirve is taken over by Roboute Guilliman's newly-founded Imperium Exsilius, the formerly independent planet gets renamed Eboracum.
• A sidestory of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines starring young Samuel Oak and Agatha reveals that Pallet Town was originally named Blank Town, and was renamed after Pallet Oak, Samuel's grandfather, who was considered the greatest Pokémon Master of all time. Agatha snarks that with a name like Blank Town, people probably jumped at the chance to change the name.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: After the Galactic Republic is forced to retreat from the Axum System, the City Planet Axum is swiftly occupied by the Imperium of Man and renamed New Cadia in honor of the original Cadia from their home galaxy, which had been destroyed during the 13th Black Crusade.

Film

• Back to the Future:
  • Not a city, but it's a plot point in Back to the Future that Riverside Drive was renamed John F. Kennedy Drive after the events of the film.
    "Who the hell is John F. Kennedy?"
  • Likewise, Shonash Ravine later became Clayton Ravine when schoolteacher Clara Clayton fell to her death there. Due to Doc's rescue of Clara and "Clint Eastwood"'s apparent disappearance there, it is instead renamed Eastwood Ravine in the new future.

Literature

• In the backstory of The Lord of the Rings, the city of Minas Ithil ("Tower of the Moon") was renamed Minas Morgul ("Tower of Black Sorcery") when it was overrun by the forces of Sauron. In response, its sister city, Minas Anor ("Tower of the Sun") was renamed Minas Tirith ("Tower of Guard").
  • Similarly, the original Minas Tirith from the Silmarillion was on Tol Sirion ("the Island of the Sirion", i.e. the Sirion river). After being taken over by Morgoth, and used by Sauron to breed werewolves, was renamed Tol-in-Gaurhoth or "Isle of Werewolves".
• One of Private Eye's stock parodies is of an African tin-pot dictatorship called "Rumbabwe, formerly British Rumbabaland" (referencing Zimbabwe and Bechuanaland/Botswana). There are also less frequent parodies of other name changes, such as the Soviet ones.
• Strugatsky Brothers novel Hard to Be a God, mentions a lot of villages being given more upbeat names in hopes of reforming them. It sounded like the attempt wasn't successful.
• In Star Wars Legends, this trope occurred on a massive scale when the extragalactic Yuuzhan Vong invaded the capital planet/global city of Coruscant, terraformed it into a humid jungle world, and renamed it Yuuzhan'tar, in an attempt to recreate their lost/destroyed original homeworld.
  • Earlier, Coruscant was renamed Imperial Center during The Empire's rule and reverted to its traditional name under the New Republic. Only die-hard Imperials used the new name in the first place. It's been taken over by resurgences of the Empire and renamed Imperial Center again twice since then.
  • Also, while the planet is called Coruscant, the city that covers it officially has another name, which changes from Galactic City to Imperial City to New Republic City. There's not much point in making the distinction anymore so it doesn't come up much.
• In the Star Trek Novel 'Verse, the capital city of Romulus changes its name at some point in the early-mid 24th century. In Star Trek: Vulcan's Heart, the capital city was given the name Ki Baratan. It had previously been called Dartha, but that was in a story set a century prior. Later novels used the time gap for a reasonable Retcon: the capital's name changes as new regimes come to power. Now, books set in the 22nd or 23rd centuries use "Dartha", those set in the 24th use "Ki Baratan". The name change is explicitly mentioned in the first Star Trek: Titan novel.
• Happens a few times in Dune. After the destruction of House Harkonnen, their homeworld of Giedi Prime was renamed Gammu and reterraformed under the leadership of Gurney Halleck. During the rule of Leto Atreides II, the capital of Arrakis, Arrakeen, was renamed Onn. Then, centuries after his long, long rule, Arrakis was known simply as "Rakis" and Arrakeen as "Keen."
• As part of the rich and complex history presented in The Wheel of Time series, many cities and countries have changed over the last Age. For instance, the city of Al'cair'rahienallen, "The Hill of the Golden Dawn," is now known as Cairhien, because it's so much less of a mouthful. Closer to the plot is an ancient city of Aridhol, which became consumed by its own evil and became known as Shadar Logoth, "The Shadow's Waiting."
• In Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay, the titular city-state is much damaged and renamed Lower Corte years before the opening of the book. Even the memory of that name is magically expunged from virtually everyone who didn't live there. The main plot of the book is about a quest to restore the city and its name. (Since it is a city-state, Air Strip One also applies.)
• Dominion is an Alternate History novel set in the 1950s where Lord Halifax becomes Prime Minister instead of Winston Churchill after Neville Chamberlain's resignation in 1940 and subsequently the UK becomes a satellite of Nazi Germany. Those resistant to Nazi rule, including most of the Royal Family, flee to other parts, many to Canada where the city of Halifax was renamed to Churchill.
• In Riddley Walker, all of the place names in the setting's post-apocalyptic Iron Age society have changed from their present-day equivalents. "Canterbury" has become "Cambry"; "Dargate", "Dog Et"; and "Dover", "Do It Over".
• Fire & Blood: The town of Stonebridge gets renamed Bitterbridge shortly after the crowning of Maegor, due to his first fight with the Faith Militant taking place there, which ends with the nearby river turning red due to all the blood.
• The Town: The good folks of Ohio frontier village Moonshine Gulch are battling with another nearby town over which will be the county seat. They decide that "Moonshine Gulch" is just too hick a name for a town with big ambitions, so they change it to "Americus."

Live-Action TV

• In Brazilian telenovela Saramandaia (both the Seventies original and the 2013 remake), the ostensible dividing issue between two political factions is a proposal to change the town's name from "Bole-Bole" to "Saramandaia".
• Starling City is renamed Star City (which was its name in the comics, although see above for why that's complicated these days) in season 4 of Arrow, in tribute to the believed-dead Ray Palmer.
• After the events of The Mandalorian season 2, Mos Pelgo was renamed Freetown, as shown in The Book of Boba Fett.
• The eponomous station from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was originally a Cardassian ore processing station called Terok Nor. It briefly returns to that name for the first six episodes of season six during the Dominion's occupation.
• In the distant future of Star Trek: Discovery season 3, the Romulans have rejoined the Vulcans on the homeworld, which is renamed Ni'Var.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "A Message from Charity", the village of Annes Town was renamed Anniston in the late 19th Century.
• In The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Adar claims the Southlands for the orcs and renames it Mordor after initiating the eruption of Mount Doom to block out the sun with volcanic ash.

Tabletop Games

• Traveller: The New Era gives us an example involving planets - the Reformation Coalition gave several of its planets new names relating to its philosophy of hope and rebirth, to make the point that the Imperium (the source of the former names) was gone and not coming back.
• The capital of Karameikos, a nation from the Mystara D&D setting, was changed from Specularum to Mirros by royal decree. In-character, this was done because "Specularum" was a name imposed by the Thyatians and raised bad feelings among the Traladaran populace, whom King Stephan wanted to appease; out-of-character, it's because one of TSR's female employees pointed out that "Specularum" sounds unpleasantly like a gynecological implement. Side note: the speculum is a general name for any tool that holds a part of the body open, and there are several types, each less auspicious a name for your city than the last. The eye speculum, for instance...
• This tends to happen to Martian city-states in Rocket Age when they are conquered or the previous rulers are overthrown. We currently have Emancipation, New Jerusalem, Neu Berlin and Nuovo Roma to name a few.
• BattleTech has a few, but the cake has to be taken by Duenkelwalderduenkelerfluessenschattenwelt. This planet in the Draconis Combine labored under that jawbreaker of a name for centuries before deciding to change the name to something simpler, namely, "Bob". However, they did this right at the beginning of the First Succession War, and the paperwork was lost in the Draconis Combine's bureaucracy amidst the maelstroms of the conflict. With that paperwork missing, requests for urgent supplies going to Bob went unheeded, as the planet didn't officially exist, at least as far as the interstellar government was concerned.

Video Games

• The Trope Namer is a standard fixture of 4X games like Civilization. In some games, when conquering an enemy city the player is asked to issue a new name; city names can also be changed by the player at any time.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, Las Vegas has been renamed, as per the title, New Vegas. On the road between Nipton and New Vegas is a town name Novac, after a motel's half-erased 'No Vacancy' sign. The town of New Canaan, though never seen and recently sacked by the time the game starts, is mentioned as being where Ogden was.
  • Other re-names in the series, seen in earlier games, include New Reno (formerly Reno, so the same "rebuilt city - New [old city name]" style as New Vegas) and Angel's Boneyard (Los Angeles).
• Half-Life 2: When the Combine took over Earth they renamed cities to things like City 17.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's Tribunal expansion has the city of Almalexia, which was originally named Mournhold, but then was named after the Physical Goddess who arranged for it to be reconstructed and expanded after it was sacked. The name Mournhold is still used to refer to the large temple compound within the city, as it's an historical site, and the oldest ruins that the modern city was built on top of (from another time the city was razed, centuries prior to the aforementioned sacking) are known as Old Mournhold.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: When founding a city, Ivy gets the option to name it, and can be changed later, if wanted. The default name is Sanctuary.
• Mass Effect 2: Planet example, with Aite. In the twenty-odd years since it was first settled, due to instability and political upheaval, it's been renamed eleven times. Most navigators and the Codex stick with calling it Aite because it came first.
• In Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, one event chain can happen when the player first produces a Mindworm boil and it subsequently gets destroyed — in-game it's noted that the Talent who was in charge of overseeing the mindworms (and was close to the faction leader) was burned to death despite trying to surrender. If the base that the offending unit was built in is subsequently conquered, it may automatically be renamed in memory of the killed Talent.
• Sunless Sea: The distant eastern island of Aestival is deserted at the beginning of the game (due to the deadly sunbeam shining directly on it through a hole in the cavern roof), but with some investigation and effort your Captain can make it habitable again and establish a colony there - and, eventually, declare yourself an independent nation recognised by other states of the Neath. Unlike the 4X genre, the game engine isn't really equipped to let you name it yourself, but if you choose to give it a new name, you can become the founder of New London, Lastport, Freedom, Utopia Beneath ("...like the fruit?"), Sophia, Fiddler's Gold, Peachtree Isle, Head Office, Sanctuary, the Empire of Trees, or B____r Off.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: Strong Bad says that one of the requirements for becoming an officially licensed unlicensed seller of cheap Strong Bad and The Cheat knock-off merchandise is that it has to be made in a country that's changed its name at least five times since Strong Bad was in seventh grade. This is spoken over a visual of a country getting its name crossed off and replaced five times (Gunkistan → East Paunch → Republic of Wad → Double G → West Paunch → Guttenberg).
• RWBY: On Remnant, the four Kingdoms all share the same name as their capital city. The Kingdom of Atlas was originally known as the Kingdom of Mantle, but after the Great War, when Atlas Academy was established, the city that quickly sprung up around said school grew to the point where the decision was made to move the capital there as well. It's implied that some of the people of Mantle are still holding a grudge over that as well.

Webcomics

• The Order of the Stick:
  • After almost a year of occupying Azure City, Redcloak renamed it "Gobbotopia" as part of a plan to create a stable monster state.
  • The Western Continent's nation-states and cities are constantly changing names around once a year, as that's how long it takes the average tyrant to be overthrown and replaced by another tyrant.
• This xkcd strip starts with a straight example regarding disputed Israel/Palestine territories, then parodies it with Texas and Oklahoma.

Web Original

• Dream SMP: After being taken over by Jschlatt, the nation of L'Manberg (or L'Manburg, both are correct spellings) gets renamed to "Manberg/Manburg" to signify that the country would "no longer take Ls". Characters sympathetic to the original L'Manberg administration, most prominently Niki, have been told by Manberg-side characters to refer to the nation by its new name, but they often refuse to comply to this, to the point calling the nation by its original name was often a signifier of the character's allegiance. However, once the country was taken back after the Civil War, it gets renamed back to its original L'Manberg/L'Manburg, though some people call it New L'Manberg/L'Manburg to distinguish it from the original administration.

Western Animation

• Used in Avatar: The Last Airbender. The city of Omashu was originally named after its founders; the secret lovers Oma and Shu, who united their warring villages to create the city. However, when it gets taken over by the Fire Nation it is renamed as "The City of New Ozai".
• An episode of King of the Hill has Peggy do some digging into Arlen's history and discover, to her horror, that it used to be named Harlotown,^note Yes, an entire city of brothels; somewhere, Frank Miller is looking on and smiling and the name "Arlen" developed because of people who were in a hurry to get there and didn't have time to say the real name.
• Futurama:
  • It is revealed that during the 23rd century, the Star Trek fandom became a religion so powerful that Germany was briefly renamed "Nazi-Planet Episode Land".
  • And of course, after one of the (apparently several) times that New York was destroyed and rebuilt over the past thousand years, it was renamed New New York.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Treehouse of Horror II" includes a parody of one of the stories in Twilight Zone: The Movie in which Bart has the world at his command because he can read minds and manipulate reality.
    Edna Krabappel: Well, class, the history of our country has been changed again, to correspond with Bart's answers on yesterday's test. America was now discovered in 1942 by... Some Guy. And our country isn't called America anymore. It's Bonerland.
  • In "Simpson Safari", in a matter of seconds as the family is about to land in Tanzania (see below), the country is renamed "New Zanzibar" and then "Pepsi Presents New Zanzibar".
  • Played for Laughs in "The Seven Beer Snitch" when Mayor Quimby has to change the name of Springfield to escape their creditors. He asks the townspeople to come up with a new name for the town, and they suggest things like "Wiggumville", "Gotham City", and "Burger King".
• In Bojack Horseman, BoJack steals the "D" from the Hollywood sign while drunk, after which it is referred to as Hollywoo, until the series finale when it's renamed Hollywoob after Mr. Peanutbutter tries to have the "D" replaced, but is sent a "B".

Occurences in Real Life

In general, colonies tend to get rid of their master's name on independence (for reasons that have as much to do with accuracy as with pride).

Africa

Southern Africa

• South Africa has an ongoing campaign to change English and Dutch/Afrikaans names to local names. It's harder than you'd think, because the country has 11 official languages. In some cases, there's a longstanding local name, but even then it's not always in widespread use (e.g. "Warmbad" is better known than "Bela Bela", and "Port Elizabeth" is more often used than "iBhayi" or "Gqeberha"). The biggest controversy is in the national capital Pretoria, which can't really be given a "local" name because all the different linguistic communities have their own name for it, but the frontrunner is "Tshwane", which is the name given to the greater municipality in which Pretoria sits.
• South-West Africa → Namibia. It used to be a German colony before World War I, then was taken over by South Africa for about 70 years.
• Southern Rhodesia → Zimbabwe, and Northern Rhodesia → Zambia. They were named after British colonial icon Cecil Rhodes, nowadays considered an unpleasant figure in Africa, to say the least. Southern Rhodesia's capital city Salisbury also got a rename to Harare. (Northern Rhodesia/Zambia's capital, on the other hand, had pretty much always been called by the native name Lusaka.)
• Bechuanaland → Botswana. In The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency TV adaptation Grace references this when complaining the office does not have a computer.
• Swaziland → eSwatini. This was a relatively recent change, only becoming official in 2018 (on the 50th anniversary of the country's independence), but it had been used for a bit before then.

Central Africa

• Belgian Congo → Republic of the Congo → (1960-64); the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1964-65) → Zaire (1965-97) → the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The "Republic of the Congo" name, meanwhile, would be adopted in the neighbouring former French Congo, only to change to the People's Republic of the Congo between 1970 and 1992. The two countries are frequently confused for each other, and occasionally they are referred to as "Congo-Kinshasa" and "Congo-Brazzaville" by their respective capital cities as a way to disambiguate them.
• Ubangi-Shari → Central African Republic → Central African Empire → Central African Republic. The "Empire" was short-lived (1976-79) and mostly the brainchild of the country's military dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who essentially bankrupted the country just through his lavish coronation.

Western Africa

• Dahomey → Benin. Confusingly, not the successor to the historical Benin Empire, but rather named after the Bight of Benin (which it borders), which was in turn named after the empire. The name was chosen as a compromise between the Dahomey, Atakora, and Burgu ethnic groups which make up the nation. The historic Benin Empire was instead located in what is now Nigeria — a region which briefly seceded from Nigeria in 1967 to become the "Republic of Benin"^note really more of a puppet state of the breakaway Republic of Biafra in southeastern Nigeria (but thankfully modern Benin was still known as Dahomey back then).
• Gold Coast → Ghana. Also named after a historical kingdom which was actually somewhere else — its furthest southern reach was a few kilometers north of modern Ghana's northern border. Even ethnic connections to the historical entity are spurious, as very few of historical Ghana's dominant Soninke people live in modern Ghana, which is dominated by the unrelated Ashanti, Fanti, Akan, Guan, and Ewe peoples.
• Ivory Coast → Côte d'Ivoire. It means the same thing, but in French; the Francophones just prefer that you use it in English, too.
• Upper Volta → Burkina Faso. It changed in 1984 because... well, because something had to change? The new name means "the land of the honest men".
• Spanish Sahara → Western Sahara. It's a way of proclaiming independence. It's not really independent — its sovereignty is disputed and it's mostly occupied by neighbouring Morocco. But at least it's clearly not Spanish anymore.
• Spanish Guinea → Equatorial Guinea, though it bore its current name during the last few years of Spanish rule in the 1960s.
• Portuguese Guinea → Guinea-Bissau, named after its capital city to disambiguate it from neighbouring Guinea.
• Portuguese West Africa → Angola. Interestingly, this only applies in English; Portuguese speakers always used "Angola", the name coming from Queen Ngola Nzinga of the Kingdom of the Congo. Within Angola are a few more:
  • Fort Huambo → Nova Lisboa → Huambo
  • Moçâmedes (after a Portuguese baron) → Namibe (after the desert, which also lends its name to Namibia) → Moçâmedes (the colonial name was always popular)
  • Vila Salazar (after the Portuguese dictator) → N'dalatando
  • São Salvador do Congo → M'banza Kongo

Eastern Africa

• Abyssinia → Ethiopia. There wasn't really an official change — it just changed from one exonym to the other, "Abyssinia" coming from Arabic and "Ethiopia" coming from Greek.
• Tanganyika and Zanzibar → Tanzania. The two colonies combined into a single independent country and decided to name itself as if it were a celebrity couple.
• British East Africa → Kenya. The name "Kenya" dates back as far as 1920, decades before independence, and was necessary because by then Kenya was not the only "British East Africa", the British Empire having just taken Tanganyika from the Germans. There's also a pronunciation distinction — it's now pronounced "Kenn-ya", with a short vowel, as the locals have always done, but the English historically pronounced it "Keen-ya", and you might still find older Brits who say it this way (with the added connotation of pining for the good old days of the British Empire).
• Madagascar, after obtaining independence from France, changed many cities' names, for several different reasons:
  • The city always had a Malagasy name, but they wanted to abandon the French transliteration for something more accurate (e.g. Tananarive → Antananarivo, Majunga → Mahajanga, Tuléar → Toliary);
  • The city's former Malagasy name was replaced by a French one that they wanted to change back (e.g. Tamatave → Toamasina);
  • The city was founded by Europeans but picked up a Malagasy name over time (e.g. Diego-Suarez → Antseranana, Fort-Dauphin → Tolanaro, Hopeful Point → Foulpointe → Mahavelona);
• Portuguese East Africa → Mozambique. Much like with Angola, "Mozambique" was always used by Portuguese speakers. Within Mozambique:
  • Delagoa Bay → Lourenço Marques (after a Discoveries-era navigator) → Maputo (after the river which flows west of the city). Originally the Frelimo government wanted to name it "Can Phum", after a local pre-colonial chief, but they never went through with it.
  • Vila Salazar (after the Portuguese dictator) → Matola (after the local Matsolo people).
  • António Enes → Angoche (1976)
  • Gurúè → Vila Junqueiro (1959) → Gurúè (1975)
  • João Belo → Xai-Xai (1975)
  • Kuamba → Cuamba (1937) → Nova Freixo (1952) → Cuamba (1976)
  • Mandigos → Vila Pery (1916) → Chimoio (1975)
  • Malvérnia → Chicualacuala (1975)
  • Porto Amélia → Pemba (1975)
  • Quissico → Zavala (1975)
  • Vila Cabral → Lichinga (1975)
  • Vila Gouveia → Catandica (1975)
  • Vila Luísa → Marracuene (1975)
  • Vile Trigo de Morais → Chokwe (1997)
• The French overseas department La Réunion in the Indian Ocean. First an uninhabited Island called Dina Maghrabin ("West Island") by the Arabs and Santa Apolonia by the Portuguese, it was claimed for France in 1640, named Île Bourbon after the royal house, and colonized. Once the Bourbons were ousted from the throne and France became a republic, the isle was renamed La Réunion in 1793 to commemorate the reunion of the volunteers from Marseille and the Parisian National Guard for the storming of the Tuileries on August 10, 1792. The local slave-owners were incensed when the French Republic tried to abolish slavery in 1794^note (this measure was never implemented on La Réunion and Île de France (Mauritius) because the local slave-owners made it clear they would rather hand over the islands to the British) and consequently they were so grateful to Napoleon for restoring it throughout The French Colonial Empire that they renamed the island Île Bonaparte in 1806. After the British took the island in 1810 they called it Île Bourbon again. That name stuck after it was returned to France, even after the Revolution of 1830, which once again deposed the Bourbons (the new reigning House of Orléans being a younger branch of the House of Bourbon). Finally, the February Revolution of 1848 brought back the republican name La Réunion.

Northern Africa

• Libya:
  • Oea → Tripoli. This changed happened a long time ago; it was founded by the Phoenicians, who founded two other cities nearby. Together, the Greeks called them the "three cities", or tripolis, and over time, the name was appropriated to refer exclusively to Oea. Tripoli is now Libya's capital city.
  • Euesperides/Hesperides → Benghazi. Again, the change happened a long time ago; the city was founded by the Greeks, but in the 3rd century BCE, it was changed to "Berenice", honouring the name of a local princess who was given in marriage to king Ptolemy III. It got its present name after it became a major settlement again during the Ottoman period.
  • Balagrae → Sidi Rafaa → Bayda. The original name came from the Greeks, surviving to the early Islamic period. It settled on the current name after the establishment of an influential Sufi order.

Australia/Oceania

Australia

• Sandhurst → Bendigo, Victoria. The locals always called it "Bendigo"; the name was officially Sandhurst in the 19th century, but the authorities couldn't convince anyone to use the official name and just gave up.
• Anthony van Diemen's Land → Van Diemen's Land → Tasmania. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the island's namesake, was indeed the first European to see it (after somehow missing all of mainland Australia). But Tasman initially named it after his patron. When the British took over, they shortened the name, and eventually renamed it after Tasman himself 200 years after Tasman originally sighted it.
• Batmania → Bearbrass → Melbourne. Nowadays, it's one of Australia's two major cities. No one knows why it was named Bearbrass, but "Batmania" came from the city's original founder, John Batman.
• Ayers Rock → Uluru. It's the most visible of the many name changes among places and landmarks from English to their original Aboriginal names.
• Many places in Australia had German names, which changed during World War I because they didn't want to be associated with the "enemy". Some changed back (like Hahndorf, SA, which temporarily became Ambleside). Others didn't (e.g. Blumburg → Birdwood, SA; Bismark → Collinsvale, TAS). The weirdest change was Germanton → Holbrook, NSW; the town was renamed after Victoria Cross-winning British submarine captain Norman Douglas Holbrook, despite it being 300 kilometres from the nearest coastline — the town is now famous for having the hull of the Cold War-era submarine HMAS Otway situated in a park on the main highway.

Not Australia

• New Hebrides → Vanuatu. They went to the local name on independence in 1980.
• Portuguese Timor → East Timor → Timor-Leste. The change to "East Timor" happened in 1975, when the country was occupied by Indonesia, who controls West Timor — they booted out the Portuguese, but weren't any better themselves. The country became independent in 1999. The "Timor-Leste" name is kind of like "Côte d'Ivoire" — it's not really any more valid than the English version, but it's more technically "correct". The city of Vila Salazar (seems like every damn Portuguese colony named a town after the guy) was renamed Baucau.
• New Zealand has an ongoing debate about whether to use English names or Māori names where they exist — it's even been enshrined as part of the settlement resolving the grievances of the Māori resulting from the Treaty of Waitangi. They usually end up choosing both and just not caring whether you use one or the other (e.g. Mt. Egmont/Mt. Taranaki, Mt. Cook/Mt. Aoraki). Even the names "North Island" and "South Island" were given equally valid Maori equivalents ("Te Ika-a-Māui" and "Te Waipounamu" respectively) after it was discovered in 2009 that nobody had bothered to give them official names. The weirdest example is probably Wanganui/Whanganui, which has a debate about its proper Māori spelling — the local iwi pronounce them the same (they're usually not — in Te Reo Māori the "wh" is pronounced like "f") — and even then both versions are equally acceptable.

Americas

The United States

Americans have weird naming conventions sometimes:

• New Angoulême → Nieuw Amsterdam → New York City. The first name was given by Italian explorers; the second by the Dutch, who settled the area in 1609. In 1674, the Second Anglo-Dutch War was settled by the Treaty of Westminster, which handed the city to the Duke of York, who renamed it to what we know today. Interestingly, many Dutch place names in and around New York were anglicised but not substantially changed (e.g. Haarlem → Harlem, Vlissingen → Flushing, Breukelen → Brooklyn), and others never changed at all (e.g. Stuyvesant Town, named after the last governor of Nieuw Nederland, Peter Stuyvesant).
• King County, Washington → King County, Washington. Not an obvious change, but a symbolic one — it was formerly named after William Rufus King, Vice President at the time of the county's inception (and most famous for defending slavery in the Senate), but in 2005 it was changed to be named after Martin Luther King Jr. (who happened to visit Seattle in 1961).
• During the 1890s, the U.S. Post Office Department^note the current U.S. Postal Service didn't start operations until 1971 began standardizing spellings by enforcing certain rules, among them being shortening -borough to -boro and -burgh to -burg. This policy relented in The '50s and many communities have claimed their "h" back, but it took decades for all the signs to change. One city that fought the policy throughout was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was big enough to fight back on it — conveniently, all the other places named "Pittsburgh" which were forced to drop the "h" (e.g. Pittsburg, Kansas and Pittsburg, California^note formerly the more awkward "New-York-of-the-Pacific") never fought to get it back, liking how the lack of an "h" differentiated them from the more "important" Pittsburgh.
• Biddle City → Lansing, Michigan. The original name came from a "settlement" by two brothers from upstate New York, who tried to convince others in their hometown to come and settle by pretending that it was already a real town, with a church and post office and everything. Those settlers came and found it mostly empty, so they started from scratch and named it "Lansing Township" after their New York home. The Michigan state government moved next door in the meantime (not wanting to be too close to the Canadian border in Detroit anymore) and established the "Town of Michigan", which Lansing eventually absorbed.
• Mosquito County → Orange County, Florida. It was renamed once it became the center of the state's citrus industry — who wants to invest in a county named after a disease vector?^note Albeit one that (unwittingly for all parties) inspired a Floridian to invent refrigeration and air conditioning? No seriously, the first rudimentary modern refrigeration technology was developed by a Scottish doctor in the 1840s Florida Panhandle trying to find a cure for malaria (which he didn’t realize was spread by the mosquitoes all around). Orange County, FL also became the namesake for the somewhat more famous Orange County in California. It was also home to a County Commissioner named Lawson Lamar who in the late 70s tried desperately to name a street after him — he made it official, but the locals kept taking down the signs with his name on them.
• East Paterson → Elmwood Park, New Jersey and West Paterson → Woodland Park, NJ. Both were neighborhoods of the New Jersey city of Paterson which changed their names to associate themselves with the city, which was once a key global producer of silk and at its height was a major artistic and cultural center (it produced William Carlos Williams, among others). Ninety years later, the Paterson no longer produced silk, the factories were run-down and abandoned, and the place was considered (fairly or unfairly) a crime-ridden ghetto, so they change their names again to disassociate themselves with it. A local joke is that Paterson will rename itself "Park" in revenge.
• Frenchtown → Monroe, Michigan. The settlement was renamed following James Monroe's visit to the Michigan Territory in 1817, but the earlier name was immortalized in the Battle of Frenchtown in the War of 1812. The county is also named after Monroe, and the township north of the present City of Monroe is named Frenchtown.
• Terminus → Marthasville, Georgia → Atlanta. It's the biggest city in the South, but its prominence is relatively recent.
• Edwinton → Bismarck, North Dakota. The name change came in 1873 to appeal to a new wave of German immigrants. Interestingly averted during World War I and World War II, when the city resisted calls to change its name despite it being named after an "enemy" figure.
• Pig's Eye → St. Paul, Minnesota. It was named after the local tavern. It's now the state's capital.
• Rancho San Pascual → Indiana Colony/Orange Grove → Pasadena, California. The town of Rancho San Pascual changed its name in 1874, but they couldn't decide between the two names, and both became valid postal addresses, each with their own post office. It worked until the city became too big to sort it out, hence the change to Pasadena.
• San Miguel → San Diego, California. It was originally named by Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who landed there in 1542. When Sebastián Vizcaíno landed there sixty years later in 1602, he renamed it inadvertently — he didn't realize that the land had already been named and claimed for the Spanish Empire. Vizcaíno's name was the one that stuck.
• Slaughter → Auburn, Washington. The community was named in 1884 after Lt. William Slaughter, who was killed in a skirmish in 1855 while leading a military unit in the area. It was changed in 1893 due to its negative connotations, particularly because the largest local hotel was named the "Slaughter House" (which also became the name of its train station). What's even weirder is that decades later, Auburn would be home to Serial Killer Gary Ridgway.
• Santa Ángela → San Angela → San Angelo, Texas. It was originally named after the founder's wife, but "Santa Angela" was too hard to say for the locals, who shortened it to "San Angela". In 1883, the U.S. Post Office pointed out that the name was grammatically incorrect and insisted on the present name as a condition for opening a post office there. It's still technically incorrect; "Angelo" is Italian, and the proper Spanish should be "San Ángel".
• Yerba Buena → San Francisco. The settlement was originally named after a local medicinal plant, but when the United States took over in 1846, it was renamed after the nearby (and much better known) Mission San Francisco de Asis (after St. Francis of Assisi).
• Horse Head → Palmerton, Pennsylvania. It was a zinc mining town named after the mining company Horse Head Industries. Its owner, John Palmer, didn't like the idea of the town being named after him, but they were calling it "Palmerton" unofficially even before he died, and the name change became official after he died.
• Some places were renamed because they contained slurs or other references to unsavory ideas and individuals:
  • A lot of places in the U.S. used to be rather callously named "Nigger" or some variety thereof. Many changed "Nigger" to "Negro", which is only slightly better. Among the changes are Dead Nigger Creek → Dead Negro Draw, TX, and Nigger Bill Canyon → Negro Bill Canyon, Utah (there's a further push to change to "Grandstaff Canyon", after the namesake's last name, but the NAACP is not pushing the issue).
  • Some places were called "squaw", a slur against Native Americans, particularly in the West. The state of Oregon mandated that all geographic names with "squaw" must be renamed (and also artfully renamed "Dead Indian Road" to "Dead Indian Memorial Road"). Arizona renamed Squaw Peak to Piestewa Peak, after Army Spc. Lori Ann Piestewa, the first known Native American woman to die in combat in the U.S. military and the first female soldier to be killed in action in the Iraq War.
• Smithton → Columbia, Missouri. The town was founded by the Smithton Land Company (made up of settlers from Kentucky and Virginia) on the Boone's Lick Road to the salt lick in neighboring Howard County. In 1821, the town was renamed "Columbia", a historical name for the United States.
• Oakwood Heights → Melvindale, Michigan. It was originally formed as a rural residential settlement that quickly became a dense suburb of Detroit, and was soon renamed for one of its developers, Melvin Wilkinson. The Detroit neighborhood northeast of the present-day City of Melvindale is still named Oakwood Heights.
• Halfway → East Detroit → Eastpointe, Michigan. As the community was located at approximately the halfway point on a stage run between Detroit and Mount Clemens, that was how it got its original name. As Detroit grew further towards Halfway, the village incorporated as the city of East Detroit to associate itself with its new southern neighbor...only to change its name again in 1992 to associate itself with the nearby afflulent Grosse Pointes instead after Detroit itself landed in what was considered, at the time, an inescapable downward spiral.
• Minor Lane Heights → Heritage Creek, Kentucky. This small suburb of Louisville, incorporated in 1960, took its name from the main road into the community. In 2003, the city of Louisville merged with surrounding Jefferson County, but all incorporated cities in the county, including MLH, kept their status. With Louisville International Airport set to expand later in that decade, and MLH lying directly under a major flight path,^note Also of note is that said expansion was triggered mainly by the needs of UPS, whose main US hub is in Louisville. In turn, this means that the airport's busiest time is in the overnight hours as cargo flights come and go. the city relocated to a new site about 5 miles (8 km) away (but still in Jefferson County), taking its new name from a stream at the new site.
• A few places in the U.S. renamed themselves only temporarily as publicity stunts:
  • Buffalo, Texas changed its name three times to avoid association with Buffalo, NY — but only temporarily, as a local Texas team was playing a team from Buffalo in the proverbial Big Game. The first two were in 1993 and 1994, when the Dallas Cowboys played the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl; they named the town "Blue Star" after the Cowboys' logo. Then in 1999, the Dallas Stars battled the Buffalo Sabres for The Stanley Cup, and the town became "Green Star" after the Stars' colours. (The Dallas teams won every matchup.)
  • Clark, Texas became DISH, Texas, because Dish Network offered the inhabitants free satellite TV for ten years if they changed their name.
  • Halfway, Oregon became Half.com, Oregon, to promote a short-lived website that existed at the height of the dot-com boom. All parties involved have quietly let the whole affair be forgotten.
  • Topeka, Kansas became Google, Kansas for the entirety of March 2010, as a way to convince Google to bring its experimental fiber-optic network to the city. This wasn't even a legal name change (their lawyers advised against it). In return, Google changed their name to Topeka for April Fools' Day. Topeka had a bit of a history of this — they twice changed their name to "Topikachu", once on the day the original video games were released in the U.S., and again two decades later to promote Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!.
• A variation on the above is a town that permanently changes its name in exchange for certain goods or services.
  • A guy named Thomas Bicknell offered to donate a free library with 1,000 books to any town that would rename itself after him. In 1914, two small Utah towns expressed interest. He decided to give each town 500 books. Thurber became Bicknell and Grayson became Blanding (Bicknell's wife's maiden name).
  • In 1916 educator Alice Lloyd went to the tiny town of Caney Creek, Kentucky to start a post office and a college (now called Alice Lloyd College), and launched a fundraising campaign for both. After the Browning Society pledged some money, Lloyd renamed the town Pippa Passes in Robert Browning's honor.
  • Hot Springs, New Mexico became Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, after the quiz show Truth or Consequences, whose host promised to air the show out of the first city to do this. The change stuck. Locals typically shorten it to "T or C". There's still a park there named for the show's host Ralph Edwards.
• A few others tried to rename themselves, but it didn't stick. North Beach in Burlington, Vermont was renamed "Bernie Sanders beach" by the city council. It lasted about a day and a half before Sanders himself asked them to change it back.
• The curiously named town of Santa Claus, Indiana, originally called itself Santa Fe. The Post Office Department asked the township to name itself "something more original." How the residents came to name it after jolly old Saint Nick is a mystery, but the name stuck, and brought enough fame to the town that it became host to multiple Christmas-themed amusement parks^note almost all have been agglomerated into Holiday World, which as the name implies is no longer restricted to just Christmas theming. It also resulted in them getting sent tens of thousands of letters addressed to "Santa Claus" by American children around the holidays, with some post office workers even writing back in response. Chances are, if you wrote a Christmas list and addressed it to Santa, it wound up in an Indiana post office.

Canada

Almost every major city in Canada has had its name changed (York → Toronto, Bytown → Ottawa, Ville-Marie → Montreal, Granville → Vancouver, Fort Brisebois → Calgary, Fort Garry → Winnipeg). Here are some of the more interesting ones:

• Hull → Gatineau, QC. Officially, the old central city is still "Hull", but the metropolitan region is officially Gatineau. Complicating matters is that the city is right across the river from Ontario and the national capital Ottawa, meaning that it's technically also part of the greater Ottawa area (the railway station is referred to as Ottawa-Hull when listing train destinations).
• Frobisher Bay → Iqaluit, NU. It's one of many changes made to English or French place names in Nunavut and Nunavik (northern Quebec) to Inuktitut names, many of which predate the colonial names. Iqaluit in particular is the capital and biggest city in Nunavut (the rename predates the establishment of Nunavut) and is semi-famous for its airport's super-long runway, which allows it to serve as an emergency landing point for flights between Europe and the West Coast.
• Berlin → Kitchener, ON. The city was originally named after the German-American loyalists who settled there after The American Revolution. That lasted until 1916, when people started to be wary of a Canadian city named after the enemy in World War I. The city was renamed after Lord Kitchener, British military commander during The Second Boer War who had recently been killed when his ship hit a German mine. The whole thing was parodied in the CBC Sitcom The Good Germany, about the town council of the fictional town of Germany, ON.
• York → Toronto. Toronto was an older indigenous name for the area, but they quickly changed the name once they realised that they would be competing with New York across the border. The name "York" is still prominently featured throughout the city, including the neighbourhood known as North York and York University.
• Fort William and Port Arthur → Thunder Bay, ON. The two cities were separate, but everyone thought of them as one and called the area "the Lakehead". So when they merged, they asked the people what to call the new city. Only problem was that "Lakehead" and "The Lakehead" were separate options, meaning they split the vote and "Thunder Bay" ended up winning. Oops.
• Pile O'Bones → Regina, SK. Next time you think that their town name is a little embarrassing, know that it could be worse.
• Fort Brisebois → Calgary. There's a bit of a shameful story behind it — the name change came because Mr. Brisebois' commanding officer didn't like that he had taken a Métis woman as a common-law wife. The name Calgary came from an obscure Scottish village the commanding officer had recently visited on vacation.
• Asbestos → Val-des-Sources, QC. It was named for its famous Jeffrey asbestos mine, at one point the largest in the world. The name change didn't happen until 2020, even though the health hazards of asbestos had long been known before then (and the mine closed in 2012). Local politicians had lobbied for the change for years, explaining that it particularly caused issues in dealing with confused American clients, but the Francophone locals didn't particularly care because there's a different word for "asbestos" in French ("amiante"), so they didn't associate the town's name with the hazardous material. They eventually resolved to change the name in late 2019, but due to the COVID-19 Pandemic had to delay the referendum on the name change, which settled on Val-des-Sources (albeit not without some pushback).
• New Liskeard, Haileybury and Dymond → Temiskaming Shores, ON. Originally three separate localities nicknamed the "Tri-Towns", they were amalgamated in 2004.
• Chicoutimi, Jonquière, La Baie and Laterrière → Saguenay, QC. Originally four separate cities, they were merged in 2002 as Saguenay, with its name possibly derived from the Innu word "Saki-nip", which means "where water flows out".
• Galt, Preston and Hespeler → Cambridge, ON. Originally three different cities, they amalgamated in 1973.
• Sudbury → Greater Sudbury, ON. When Sudbury was amalgamated with the entire Regional Municipality of Sudbury in 2000, it had "Greater" added to its name. However, most Sudbury residents, past and present, still call it by the original name.
• Some name changes were attempted, but didn't stick. For example: Swastika, ON, now part of Kirkland Lake, was named after the nearby Swastika Gold Mine, named after the Sanskrit good-luck symbol Swastika, which was staked in the autumn of 1907, a year before the town was incorporated. During World War II, the provincial government, embarrassed that the province had a town named after the symbol that Nazi Germany had appropriated as theirs, renamed the town "Winston", after Winston Churchill. The residents removed the Winston sign and replaced it with a Swastika sign with the message "To hell with Hitler, we came up with our name first."
• Similarly, a few attempts have been made to change the name of Dildo, NL. The name originating from the early 18th century and the word itself having several non-risqué definitions at the time, including being the name of a part of a boat and an archaic term for a test tube or "dildo glass". Members of the community have embraced the name and associated humor over the years and have refused to change the name, with any attempts usually met with backlash.
  • Newfoundland also contains a widespread aversion of Please Select New 'School' Name, having abolished public funding of religious schools in 1998 it contains many, 'many' nonsectarian public schools with very Catholic-sounding names. Also, four radio stations with pre-Confederation Dominion of Newfoundland VO-- callsigns.

Elsewhere in the Americas

• British Honduras → Belize. It's named after the Belize River. It's for the better, to avoid confusion with regular Honduras next door.
• British Guiana → Guyana, and Dutch Guiana → Suriname. But interestingly, no change for French Guiana, which is still a part of France.^note It's actually not even a colony — since 1946, it's ben an "overseas department" of France (largely as a "thank-you" from Charles de Gaulle for backing the Free French Forces from the get-go in World War II). This makes it legally a part of France, meaning that it gets full representation in the French and European parliaments, even though it's in South America. This also has the peculiar effect of France's longest land border with any one country technically being with Brazil.
• In Mexico:
  • The Aztec Empire has its original name as Mexico-Tenochtitlan, when it was conquered by Spain it was renamed Nueva España (New Spain) in 1520. After the Independence, the country legal name passed through different terms: Mexican Empire (1821-1823 and 1863-1867), Mexican Nation (1824-1857), Mexican Republic (1857-1863, then 1867-1917), Mexican United States (1917-2020) and, finally, Mexico.
  • Nochistlán → Tonalá → Tlacopán → Guadalajara. The first three were all small towns with local names. The fourth was a colonial city, named after the city of Guadalajara in Spain — except the Mexican version grew to be about fifty times as populous.
  • The capital city of the Aztec Empire was called Mexico-Tenochtitlan, when it was conquered by Spain it was renamed as Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico City) in 1520, when Mexico became a Republic, the legal name of the city was called to Distrito Federal (Federal District) and finally it was recognized as a state in 2016 retaining its name of Mexico City.
  • Over the ruins of old tarascan town Guayangareo it was founded Mechuacan City in 1540 and then was renamed to Valladolid in order to honor its counterpart Spanish city. Being the city where Mexican Independence war hero, Jose Maria Morelos, was born, it was renamed Morelia in 1828 in his honor.
  • A small town in the Jalisco state was called Ayo that means "plenty of water" in Nahuatl. However, due to the existance of another town in the neighbor state of Guanajuato, it was renamed Ayo el Chico (Small Ayo) in 1583. However the name itself is an homonym of "Hallo el chico" (I found the small), where "chico" is a mexican slang for "anus" giving a lot of despective jokes over the town that decided to rename to Ayotlan in 1981 by returning to its indigneous name and prevent more jokes.
• In Brazil:
  • It's common for new names to come from spelling or grammar changes (e.g. Corytiba → Curitiba) or to keep the name shorter (e.g. São Paulo de Piratininga → São Paulo).
  • Ilha de Santa Catarina → Nossa Senhora do Desterro (or just Desterro) → Florianópolis. It was renamed in 1894 in homage to then-president Floriano Peixoto — except he wasn't very popular in the city, so you can imagine how they reacted. They've since gotten over it, although now they just shorten it to "Floripa".
  • Nossa Senhora das Neves → Filipéia → Frederikstad → Paraíba do Norte → João Pessoa. The city first changed names only three years after its foundation, after King Philip II, then subsequently renamed by the Dutch when they invaded Brazil, then renamed again after the Portuguese took the city back, and only adopted the current name in 1930, after the homonymous Paraíba governor.

Eastern Europe

Russia

Many settlements in Russia were renamed in the Soviet era to something suitably Communist and then renamed back (though some have stuck).

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• Saint Petersburg → Petrograd → Leningrad → Saint Petersburg. The city was founded by Peter the Great, who sought to establish a great Western-style port city and named it in the Dutch convention (he had a peculiar fondness for the Netherlands in particular). It changed to Petrograd when World War I began, because it sounded "too German". When the Soviet Union became a thing, it became Leningrad after Vladimir Lenin, and then when the Soviet Union collapsed it switched back to Saint Petersburg. The surrounding oblast (province) is still called "Leningradskaya", the city still has a major square named after Lenin, and some Soviet-built buildings still refer to "Leningrad".
• Königsberg → Kaliningrad. If you look at the map, it's a Russian exclave — i.e. unconnected with mainland Russia, nestled in between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. 90% of the population is ethnically Russian. That it was part of East Prussia explains the German name, but historically most of the towns around it had Polish or Lithuanian names. This didn't stop the Soviets from "Russianising" the place and giving all the surrounding towns entirely new Russian names^note in the process undoing the centuries old Germanisation of the area (which remain today — Russian law even prevents them from changing back). As for the city itself, the name "Kaliningrad" came from Soviet Head of State Mikhail Kalinin, and many of the locals still prefer the old name, pronouncing it "Kyonigsberg" in Russian. That may be why in the future history of Transhuman Space, the Kaliningrad oblast becomes an independent entity named Königsberg, but the city is still Kaliningrad.
• Nizhniy Novgorod → Gorkiy → Nizhniy Novgorod, following the usual pattern on either end of the Soviet Union's history. Curiously enough, the automaker NNAZ (for Nizhniy Novgorod Avtomobilniy Zavod) became GAZ when the city was renamed, but didn't change back to NNAZ when the city was renamed back (possibly because by then they had developed a brand around the gazelle).
• Tsaritsyn → Stalingrad → Volgograd. "Tsaritsyn" has been linked to Turkic Sāriğšin, "City of the Golden Throne". Then it was renamed "Stalingrad" in 1924 to honor Josef Stalin for his defense of it during the Civil War. The the place became famous for the 1942-1943 Battle of Stalingrad in which the Soviets turned the tide against Nazi Germany. Despite this, it was changed to "Volgograd" (after the Volga river) during the de-Stalinisation after his death in 1953. The locals are understandably very proud of the battle, and there's a civic movement to restore the Stalingrad name.
• Yekaterinburg → Sverdlovsk (1924-91) → Yekaterinburg, but the oblast retains the "Sverdlovsk" name. You can see them struggle with the older name in the 80s TV show Airwolf.
• Tsarskoye Selo ("Village of the Tsar") → Pushkin, after Alexander Pushkin, who studied in the town.
• Simbirsk → Ulyanovsk. The change was made to honor Lenin (real name Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov). It has stuck despite the end of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine

Since its independence in 1991, and even moreso since the heavy meddling of The New Russia in its internal politics that led to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine has sought to do away with its longtime historical colonizer's language in the names of its cities and other cultural fields.

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• "The Ukraine" → Ukraine. You still hear it nowadays, but it was much more common before Ukraine gained its independence. The practice apparently derives from Slavic languages having a distinction between addressing countries and parts thereof, so calling it "the Ukraine" implies that it's not a country but a part of a bigger country — which will not endear you to Ukrainians.
• Chernigov → Chernihiv.
• Chernobyl → Chornobyl. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the first prominent piece of media to use that form.
• Yekaterinoslav → Dniepropetrovsk → Dnipropetrovsk → Dnipro. The reference to Catherine the Great was gone first, the city was renamed to reflect the fact it's on the river Dnipro (Дніпро in Ukrainian) / Dniepr (Днепр in Russian) until it finally ended up just named like the river itself in Ukrainian.
• Kharkov → Kharkiv.
• Płoskirów → Proskurov → Khmelnytskyi. Both the Polish name and Russian name refer to the nearby Ploska river. The final name honors Zaporozhian Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a prominent figure in the history of the Ukrainian nation.
• Kiev → Kyiv. This is simply a change from the Russian spelling (Киев) to the Ukrainian one (Київ). The city had long been almost universally romanised as "Kiev", but Ukrainians are sore about their country's biggest city being referred to by a "foreign" language; the Ukrainian government has been requesting almost since independence that English-language media spell it "Kyiv", and only more recently has this been more widespread (especially since the mass scale Russian invasion that started in February 2022).
• Lemberg → Lwów → Lvov → Lviv. All that in the span of about 90 years. This is because the city is in western Ukraine and has been part of a lot of countries over the years — first Austria-Hungary, then Poland, then the Soviet Union, and finally Ukraine. There was also "Leopolis", a Latin semi-official name from before the Austrian days.
• Odessa → Odesa. An "s" was removed to have it be less of a Russian spelling.
• Aleksandrovsk / Oleksandrivsk → Zaporizhzhia. The city was first named after a prominent unidentified "Alexander" from Tsarist Russia. Renamed in Ukrainian from the historical region of the same name from за (za, “beyond”) + поро́ги (poróhy, “rapids”) + plural of порі́г (poríh, “river rapid, threshold”) of the Dnipro river. Zaporozhian Cossacks also took their name from that.

Poland

• A number of cities which were part of the German Empire had German names, only to get Polish ones in 1918 when Poland regained its independence. Most reverted to longstanding Polish names: examples include Posen → Poznań, Hohensalza → Inowrocław and especially Danzig → Gdańsk, which was the subject of one of The Other Wiki's lamest edit wars, to the point its talk page has eleven archives arguing about it.
• When the Nazis occupied Poland during World War II, they sometimes restored Imperial German names, and in other places they adopted new names: Gdynia (or Gdingen under Imperial German rule) became Gotenhafen under the Nazis, while Łódź was renamed Litzmannstadt after the German general who had captured the city during World War I. Zamość was first renamed Himmlerstadt and then Pflugstadt ("Plow City", in reference to the Nazi dream of settling German farmers in Poland).
• With the Nazis' defeat in World War II, Poland was (in compensation for eastern territories lost to the Soviet Union) awarded large territories that had been inhabited by Germans for centuries. Most of the cities here were founded under German rule and were given new Polish names. Among the more famous are Breslau → Wroclaw and Stettin → Szczecin.
• Kattowitz → Katowice → Stalinogrod → Katowice. In addition to the German name, there was another change that only lasted a little bit in The '50s, possibly for as long as it took the Communists to realise that "Kat" is Polish for a torturer/executioner.
• Oświęcim held that name for most of the history, being in the middle bit of Poland which Stalin and his predecessors only ethnically cleansed a little. Its name in German is far more infamous — Auschwitz.

The Czech Republic/Slovakia

• Czechoslovakia → Czech Republic and Slovakia. Then Czech Republic → Czechia. When the country split apart, "Slovakia" became a natural name for that half, but "Czech" is a denonym and not a place name, so they came up with the "Czech Republic". The Czech government has tried since then to convince English speakers to use "Czechia", but with limited success.^note Strictly speaking, both 'Czechia' and 'Czech Republic' are official names of the country ('Slovakia' is also officially called the 'Slovak Republic'), but always using the fullest and most formal name gets tiresome Historically, English speakers have also referred to Czech lands as "Bohemia", as a sort of pars par toto — Bohemia is only a part of the modern region (in much the same way that Holland is only a part of the Netherlands).
• Pressburg/Pozsony/Preszporok → Bratislava. This happened after Austria-Hungary's dissolution — the original name was German "Pressburg", but derived from the name of a Slavic ruler. There were also Slovak and Hungarian options for naming the city as well, which is damn close to both the Austrian and Hungarian borders (it's barely 100 kilometers from Vienna). When Czechoslovakia was formed, they decided to give it a more explicitly Slavic name.
• Karlsbad → Karlovy Vary. It means the same thing, but one is German and one is Slavic. In fact, there was a substantial German-speaking population there up until World War II, after which they were expelled. Throughout that time, it was commonly known in English by its German name.
• Zlín → Gottwaldov → Zlín. The name change was politically motivated — Gottwald was the first Communist president of Czechoslovakia, and the town happened to be where Tomáš Baťa founded his shoe factory. It was changed back immediately after the Velvet Revolution.

Bulgaria

A number of ancient towns and cities changed names over the centuries. Most of these are various transcriptions of the same original name depending on who held the city at the time. Some were renamed after ambitious rulers or geographical features and others (most later reverted) for ideological purposes when the country became Commie Land.

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• Serdica → Sredetz → Sofia. It was originally named after the Thracian tribe which founded it, then picked up a Slavic name (meaning "center"), and then was renamed after the city's patron saint.
• Eumolpia → Philipopolis → Pulpudeva → Trimontium → Plovdiv. It was originally founded by the Thracians, but renamed by Philip II of Macedon after himself. The Thracians took it back but just translated its Greek name, then lost it to the Romans, who eventually lost it to the Slavs. The city's also had variations of those names over the years (e.g. Puldin, Pluvdiv, Philipi, Filibe).
• Odessos → Tiberopolis → Varna, with a brief stop as "Stalin". When the Romans took over, the emperor Tiberius renamed it after himself. It got its Slavic name in the Middle Ages.
• Gorna Djumaya → Blagoevgrad. The original name was partly Turkish, which was politically unsuitable by the time the Communists came around; they renamed it after Dimitar Blagoev, an early socialist activist.
• Shumen → Kolarovgrad → Shumen. The change was temporary, in honour of the recently deceased Communist head of state Vasil Kolarov, who was born there.
• Montanesium → Kutlovitsa → Ferdinand → Mihailovgrad → Montana. The "Ferdinand" name came from the prince who named it, and "Mihailovgrad" came from Communist revolutionary Hristo Mihailov. The current name is supposedly based on the ancient Roman town.

Other Eastern European countries

• Turkey: Byzantion → Constantinople → Istanbul. There's a whole trope on this, but very briefly: Byzantion was the Greek colony formed on the Bosphorus. The Constantinople name came from the Roman Emperor Constantine, who moved the capital of the Empire there. He wanted to call it Nova Roma ("New Rome" in Latin), but the Greek-speaking locals called it "Konstantinoupolis" after him. Even when the Turks took over, they still called it "Konstantiniyye" in Turkish (the Ottomans saw themselves as successors to the Romans, including the Sultan styling himself as Kayser-i Rum), while English speakers stuck with "Constantinople". It got its fully Turkish name of İstanbul only in 1933.
• Hungary had its share of Soviet city names, e.g. Leninváros → Tiszaújváros and Sztálinváros → Dunaújváros.
• Yugoslavia had a phase when a ton of cities got Josip Broz Tito's name attached to them. Many of them didn't really change, but instead got a "Titovo" hung on them (e.g. Užice → Titovo Užice, i.e. "Tito's Užice"), but the Montenegrin capital Podgorica was renamed entirely to Titograd. Almost all of these changes were undone after the country's breakup. The Yugoslavs also made sure to change city names formerly rendered in German (e.g. Laibach → Ljubljana) or Italian (e.g. Fiume → Rijeka) — these stuck around after Yugoslavia ended, although sometimes the locals bring up the older "foreign" names as a way of celebrating not having to be a part of Yugoslavia anymore.
• Latvia: Dünaburg → Borisoglebsk → Dinaburg → Dvinsk → Daugavapils. These names reflect the local ownership at the time (German, Polish-Lithuanian, Russian, and finally Latvian), many of them reflecting the local name for the Daugava River which flows through the city. The "Daugavapils" name interestingly came during Latvia's first brief independence immediately between World War I and the subsequent Nazi and then Soviet occupation — even when it was a part of the Soviet Union, the Russians allowed the Latvian name to stick around.
• Lithuania: Pašešupys → Starapolė → Marijampolė → Kapsukas → Marijampolė. All of these names are Lithuanian, but "Kapsukas" came from local Communist governor Vincas Kapsukas.
• Finland: Vaasa → Nikolainkaupunki → Vaasa. The original change came in 1852, when the city burned down, but Russian Emperor Nicholas I donated a large sum of money to rebuild it; in gratitude, they named the city in his honour (after he died, as he disapproved of it while he was alive). The name stuck around until Nicholas II became the Tsar, and everybody hated him — when he was forced to abdicate in 1917, the name changed back.
• Estonia: Reval → Tallinn → Reval → Tallinn. It was first renamed "Tallinn" in 1918 when Estonia became independent — the Nazis restored the old name, and then the Soviets came and restored the new name.
• Armenia had many place names changed by the Soviet Union, only to be changed back when Armenia gained independence, but some took a more roundabout route:
  • Gyumri → Alexandropol → Leninakan → Gyumri. The first change was imposed by Imperial Russia; the second came from the Soviets.
  • Karakilisa → Kirovakan → Vanadzor. The original name was Turkish (meaning "black church") from when the Seljuks invaded the area, so when the Soviet name had to be excised, the Armenians chose to invent a new local one.

Western Europe

United Kingdom

• In England, most cities older than the Industrial Revolution have a string of names from successive waves of invaders, e.g. Eboracaum (Roman) → Eoforwic (Anglo-Saxon) → Jórvik (Viking) → York. Outside of England, the same thing happens, except that now you can count the English among the invaders, with many place names in Wales and Scotland being Anglicisations of local names, many of which have changed so often or have so many variant spellings that it can obscure the name of the original. Examples include: Caerdydd^note itself a corruption of the earlier "Caerdyf", suggesting that people just saw an opportunity to give it a cooler name ("Castle of the Day") → Cardiff, Inbhir Nis ("Mouth of the Ness") → Inverness, Obar Deathain ("Mouth of Two Rivers") → Aberdeen, and Dùn Dèagh ("Fort of the Tay") → Dundee.
• Streets with longstanding names have had their names changed because the locals got tired of it being an unsavoury reference to something:
  • The streets at the western end of the Strand in London were named "George", "Villiers", "Duke", "Of", and "Buckingham", to spell out the full name and title of the 18th-century landowner who built them. Most of them are still around (although George Street is now underneath Charing Cross station), but Of Alley was such a target of ridicule that Westminster City Council changed it to York Place in the 1960s.
  • Anita Street in Manchester was originally named Sanitary Street, in honour of it being the first street in the city where every house was equipped with an indoor flush toilet. The residents didn't like the original name, in part because it was inherent advertising.
  • A street in the London borough of Havering, which was named for a local councillor, had to be renamed when said councillor was convicted of paedophilia.
  • Averted in the case of Penny Lane in Liverpool, which was in fact named after a notorious 18th-century slave trader (and not the coin), and which would likely have been renamed had The Beatles not made it famous.

Ireland

Pretty much place in Ireland has two names, one in Irish and one in English. Road signs will almost always have both. Usually, the English name is an anglicisation of the Irish name, but sometimes it's not. Here are some weird ones:

• Dubh Linn ("Black Pool") → Dublin. Except in Irish, it's Dubh Linn → Baile Átha Cliath ("Town of the Hurdled Ford").
• Some places that had been renamed after British monarchs had their names changed back after the formation of the Irish Free State — e.g Dún Laoghaire - Dunleary - Kingstown - Dún Laoghaire. An Cóbh/The Cove^note the name was originally a Gaelicisation of the English word became Queenstown → became Cóbh again in 1922. Philipstown → Daingean, and Maryborough → Portlaoise. The Irish names are now fully official and not anglicised. The counties' names also changed: King's County → County Offaly and Queen's County → County Laoghis → County Laois. But in other cases, the new names never really caught on (e.g. Bagenalstown → Muine Bheag, Charleville → Ráth Luirc, Newbridge → Droichead Nua).
• Daire Calgaigh → Daire Coluimb Coille → Doire (its current Irish name) → Derrie → Londonderry → Derry. Or perhaps more accurately, "Derry/Londonderry". Use of "Derry" or "Londonderry" is hugely politically charged, revealing where one stands on The Irish Question. Formally, the city is still known as "Londonderry", having been named as such per the city's Royal Charter in 1662, which prevents the city council from changing their name to "Derry" even though they've tried. Most locals will call it "Derry" reflexively (whether Catholic, Protestant, or neither), but if they want to be politically sensitive^note which is highly advisable — even The BBC doesn't use either name for its local service there, calling it "Radio Foyle" after the river they call it "the Maiden City" or "Stroke City", referencing the stroke in "Derry/Londonderry" (popularised by local radio broadcaster Gerry Anderson, who refers to it on-air as "Derry stroke Londonderry").

Germany

• Wolfsburg, being the city where they make Volkswagens, has had its name changed a couple of times for publicity purposes. In 2003, it was temporarily (but unofficially) named "Golfsburg" after the VW Golf. More sinisterly, in the 1930s it was renamed "Stadt des KdF Wagens", KdF Wagen being what was essentially a proto-VW back then — and "KdF" referencing the Nazis' "Strength through Joy" initiative. Many gave it the nickname die Autostadt, which became the name of a large auto museum downtown.
• East Germany did its share of Communist-themed renaming, among them being Chemnitz → Karl-Marx-Stadt. These mostly were renamed back after reunification. One insidious renaming happened earlier, when Stalinstadt (founded 1950) was renamed to Eisenhüttenstadt ("City of Ironworks") in 1961.

Austria

• Fucking → Fugging. It would have been an otherwise unremarkable town if not for the name being... well, an English profanity. The locals were quite proud of their name (e.g. they named the local light beer "Fucking Hell") but annoyed at the number of Anglophone tourists who kept stealing the town sign. They eventually exhausted their sign-protection methods and renamed the place "Fugging" in 2021.
• The country itself ("Osterreich", or Eastern Realm, in German) was briefly renamed "Ostmark" ("East March/Borderland") after the Anschluss to erase its national identity. It didn't last long.

France

• La Roche-sur-Yon → Napoléon (by Imperial decree in 1804) → Bourbon-Vendée (after the Bourbon Restoration) → Napoléon (during the Hundred Days) → Bourbon-Vendée (after Napoleon's defeat) → Napoléon (under Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte) → Napoléon-Vendée (under Napoleon III, same guy) → La Roche-sur-Yon, on the establishment of the Third Republic.
• Brittany has a number of place names that used to have Brythonic names, many of which were borrowed from existing place names in Wales and Cornwall. Even the name "Brittany" itself comes from "Britain", the French language using the same word for both — "Bretagne" (Britain is accordingly "Grande-Bretagne", for "Great Britain"). Among the changes are Gwenedd (after Gwynedd in Wales) → Vannes and Kernev (after Kernow, the local name for Cornwall) → Cornouailles.

Other places

• Italy: Maloenton → Benevento. There's a legend behind the name change — it was named by the Oscan-speaking Samnites who inhabited it (probably meaning "fruit market"), but the Romans who conquered them thought it sounded an awful lot like "Maleventum", a place of "bad events". They swapped out the "male" (bad) with "bene" (well), per legend after a battle with Pyrrhus (of Pyrrhic Victory fame).
• Norway: Bjørgin → Bergen, Christiania → Kristiania → Oslo, and Nidaros → Trondheim → Nidaros → Trondheim → Drontheim → Trondheim (the latter could have been even worse, as it only barely avoided falling victim to a trend in the 1930s of ridding the country of Danish names).
• Spain: The country itself has been through several renamings in its long history: Hispania (Roman-era Iberia) → Al-Andalus (Umayyad and Moorish-era Iberia) → Spain.

Asia

Middle East

• Jerusalem was said to have "70 names", and rightly so. Its name has been changed many times over the past few millennia, whether through conquest, mistranslations, or various local pronunciations. It was originally called "Salem" or "Ur Salem", then "Jebus", then several variations of "Yerushalem" during ancient Hebrew times. During the Jewish exile in Babylonia, it was also called "Zion". Then "Aelia Capitolina" by the Romans who destroyed and rebuilt it, "Hierosolyma" by the Greek translations, later "Jerusalem" by the Christians, "Al-Quds" by the Arabs (which is itself a shortening of the old term Urshalīm al-Quds, "Jerusalem the Holy") and now finally "Yerushalayim" by the Israelis. The last three (as well as "Zion") are used concurrently today depending on one's language and political outlook, and many other languages still write or pronounce their own variations as well.
• The neighborhood around Jerusalem is a matter of ongoing debate. For millennia, it was indisputably known as Palestine, but the term encompassed a region that's part of several different countries today, including parts of the Sinai peninsula and east of the Jordan River. The term itself was given by the Romans, after the Jewish uprising under Bar Kochba (ca. 135 CE), when they merged the province of Judea into a larger one called "Palaestina" (named after the long-defunct realm of the Philistines). Most of the borders of the modern-day countries were established by European colonial powers (e.g. the British distinction between the Mandate of Palestine and Transjordan). Even Jews living there were considered "Palestinians" (e.g. the modern-day Jerusalem Post being once known as the "Palestine Post"). Then came the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and with it the very contentious political divide, which extended into what to call the area. Most Arabs (and even some politically inclined non-Arab Muslims) will still call the whole area Palestine, and certain Israelis will refer to the whole area as the "Land of Israel" (Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew). Nowadays, "Palestine" is sometimes used to denote the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are administered by the Palestinian Authority but not recognised as an independent state (and which hardline Israelis consider a part of Israel anyway, calling it "Judea and Samaria").
• Jordan: Philadelphia → Rabbath Ammon → Amman. "Philadelphia" came during the Greco-Roman era; although the name literally means the "city of brotherly love" (well-known thanks to the American city so named centuries later), it was actually named by Ptolemaic king Ptolemy II Philadelphus, after himself. "Amman" is a shortening of "Rabboth Ammon", meaning "capital of the Ammonites", which soon became an Artifact Title once the Ammonites ceased to exist as a people.
• The Pirate Coast → the Trucial Coast → the United Arab Emirates. It used to be a hotbed for pirates, what with being able to use the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint for the Persian Gulf, but then the Royal Navy engaged in a series of truces with the local rulers and rid the area of pirates. It picked up its current name upon independence from the British Empire, and it more or less called itself that because it was a relatively loose confederation of princely states.
• Iraq: Revolution City → Saddam City → Sadr City. It's a suburb of Baghdad originally constructed in 1959. After the Ba'athists took power, it was renamed after Saddam Hussein, and after he was overthrown in 2003 it was renamed after respected Shi'a jurist-cleric-activist Mohammed al-Sadr (not to be confused with his hothead son Muqtada).
• Hejaz + Najd = Saudi Arabia. Historically, it was made up of two separate territories, one bordering the Red Sea containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and the other being the vast desert of the central Arabian peninsula. Curiously, the country is named after the House of Saud, and if it were ever deposed the country would probably have to be renamed again. Within the country:
  • Yathrib → al-Madinah al-Munawarrah ("the city of light"). The change was made after the rise of Islam; "Medina" is a common shorthand (and just means "city" in Arabic).
• Persia → Iran. In this case, it's a reflection of local usage — Persia is a Greek exonym (from the city of Persepolis, in turn from the Fars region, which is the name of the modern-day Iranian province considered the heartland of Iranian culture), and "Iran" is what Iranians have always called themselves. The term ultimately derives from "Aryan", from the ancient Indo-Aryans who ended up populating modern-day Iran and northern India. Within the country:
  • Sanabad → Mashhad. It received its present name (meaning "place of martyrdom" in Arabic) when Shi'a Islam became dominant in Iran, since it's the burial site of Ali al-Ridha, the eighth Twelver Shi'a Imam.
  • Cameron → Gombrun (variant spelling) → Bandar Abbas.
  • Verkana → Astarabad → Gorgan. In this case, "Gorgan" is a modern rendering of the Old Persian "Verkana", meaning "land of wolves".
  • Kermanshah → Bakhtaran → Kermanshah. The name change came after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as the new government didn't like that it had "shah" (meaning "king") in the name. The new name, Bakhtaran, means "western", denoting its locaiton near the western border with Iraq — and then came the Iran–Iraq War, during which the government changed it back to invoke ancient Iranian culture.
  • A number of streets across Iran, and in particularly the capital Tehran, were changed after the Revolution, mostly because they were named after now unsavory figures such as Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. One particularly interesting one was a Tehran street renamed after Bobby Sands, a Northern Irish hunger striker who died in prison in 1981^note and in the process became the first dead person to win election to the British Parliament — which just happened to be where the British Embassy was located, forcing them to choose between putting Sands' name on their mailing address or moving everything to a new location (at least until they realised they could just move the building's entrance around the corner to a different street).

South Asia

• India: A lot of Indian cities with foreign names have received/reverted back to "Indian" names in recent years, especially since the right-wing BJP party took control. Whether the names are accurate are left to interpretation.
  • Mumbai: Formerly Bombay. Somewhat controversial, as Bombay is not an Indian city colonised by Europeans, but rather a city built by the Portuguese from scratch - and anyway, everyone still calls the associated film studios "Bollywood", not "Mollywood".
    • Even the change itself has not been uniformly applied to government institutions. There is still a university in Mumbai called IIT Bombay, while some foreign languages (Spanish, French) still use the classic name.
    • This caused some confusion in Indian restaurants in the UK with many dishes such as Bombay potatoes and Bombay duck being renamed, though often some would be Mumbai and others Bombay. Thankfully this has largely been undone and they are back to the original Bombay name.
  • Since 2001, Calcutta is once again Kolkata.
  • Chennai: Until 1996 used to be called Madras.
    • In fact Madras and Chennai were the names of two neighbouring villages that were the core of the large city that has grown up around them; it's just that post-independence India preferred to use the name of the one that the Raj didn't use.
  • Prayagraj, formerly Allahabad. This one can rile up tempers depending on which religion you follow, since the city is named after a God that isn't followed by the majority of the city's population anymore (but its followers still make up a significant minority). The rename was eventually made official in 2018, but most foreign literature still refer to it as "Allahabad", since it was the city's name before people made a big deal about it.
  • Kozhikode: Formerly Calicut. Varanasi: Former Benares.
• Ceylon => Sri Lanka. "Ceylon" derives from the Português "Ceilão", from Greek "Sielen Diva" which ultimately comes from either the Sinhala "Sinhaladvipa" (lit. "Island of the Sinhala") or the Tamil "Cheranthivu" meaning "Island of the Chera" (the Chera being an ancient Tamil dynasty". "Lanka" is one of the oldest names of the island (being referred to as such in the Hindu epic Ramayana), with "Sri", a Sanskrit honorific, meaning "resplendent" in this context.
  • Formerly formerly Serendip, which has the same root as "Ceylon" ^note  Yes, the word "serendipity" comes from the Persian fairytale "The three princes of Serendip". "Ceylonity" would sound silly, eh?
  • The ancient Greeks used to call it Taprobana (ultimately from Sanskrit "Tamraparni", supposedly coined by Prince Vijaya, the legendary founder of the Sinhala people, upon landing on the island; the name either meaning "Copper-colored leaf" or "tree with red leaves"), — and this is used even in The Lusiads by Luís de Camões.
  • Colombo's Victoria Park (after the Queen) was renamed in 1958 to Viharamahadevi Park, after the 2nd-century BC queen and mother of King Dutugæmunu
  • Torrington Square, named after George Byng, 7th Viscount Torrington who served as Governor of British Ceylon from 1847-1850 (and while in office brutally suppressed an anticolonial uprising), was renamed Independence Square in 1948
• Afghanistan:
  • The country itself was previously known as Ariana ("land of the Aryans", the same etymology as Iran above). It got its present name when the Pashtun (archaic name "Afghan") ethnic group wrestled control over the country from the Persians and Turko-Mongols.
  • Jalalabad, originally Adinapur. The present name (Jalal + abad, "place of Jalal") was chosen to honor the third Mughal emperor, Akbar (full name Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar).
  • The Nuristan Province used to be caled Kafiristan ("land of infidels"), because its indigenous people, the Nuristanis, practiced ancient Afghan polytheism. After they were converted to Islam, the region became Nuristan ("land of the enlightened").

East Asia

• China has lots of cases that look like name changes, although in fact, most of the names have stayed the same in Chinese. The apparent change is due to either the new transliteration system, or due to the government mandating the use of standard Mandarin for placenames rather than local languages/dialects. For further details, see Why Mao Changed His Name.
  • Beijing (formerly Peking) is the most obvious example of the new transliteration system coming into effect.
    • After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Peking ("Northern Capital") became Peiping ("Northern Peace", "Beiping" in modern Pinyin), since the Chinese capital was moved to Nanjing/Nanking ("Southern Capital"), until the PRC was declared in 1949, with Beijing/Peking as the capital again.
    • Peking University still keeps the old spelling officially.
  • Guangzhou: Formerly Canton, which is derived from the Portuguese rendition of the local name for the province (Guangdong) in which the city sits^note "Canton", though etymologically derived from "Cantão" (the Portuguese transliteration of "Guangdong"), refers only to the provincial capital instead of the whole province.
  • Xiamen: Formerly Amoy, a local name which got displaced by its quite different-sounding (although still related) Mandarin equivalent.
  • Other examples of the "different attempt at writing the same basic name" type are Xi'an, Tianjin, and Qingdao (formerly Sian, Tientsin, and Tsingtao, respectively). Xinjiang Province (formerly Sinkiang), and Sichuan Province (formerly Szechuan) are just a few more examples. There are countless others.
    • Xi'an actually does have a name change: It was known as Chang'an ("long tranquility") while it was the capital, only becoming "Xi'an" ("western tranquility") from the Ming Dynasty onwards, after the capital had become well established in Beijing.
  • Kaifeng was founded as Daliang in 364 BC, rebuilt as Bian in AD 781 and also went by Bianjing, Bianzhou and Dongjing.
• Hong Kong is a mild example: before 1926 it used to be spelt as one word, "Hongkong". Some particularly old institutions still use the old spelling, such as The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC).
  • Incidentally there is a company in Hong Kong called "Amoy Food" based on the old name of Xiamen.
  • A case where the city is no longer a city: the central area of Hong Kong on the north coast of Hong Kong Island used to be referred to as the City of Victoria, which was dissolved into the Central and Western District and Wan Chai District with the handover.
• Transliteration is an occasional problem in other Asian languages also. While the elongated "o" sound in Japanese is, in most cases, simply transliterated as plain "o" in English (thus, Tokyo), despite this being ambiguous with the short "o" sound, some insist on writing it out unambiguously with a digraph: usually "ou", based on how the sound is represented in hiragana,^*There are some exceptions—most commonly the term for "great" or "large"—which are currently written as "oo" instead of "ou", usually because they were historically written "oho" while the "h" consonant had become silent. but less often "oh" or "oo"^*Using "oo" matches the hiragana spelling of a minority of words containing the sound, while Yale romanisation prefers "oo" everywhere. Whereas, "oh" is one of multiple permitted romanisation options on passports.—thus "Tokyo" would be "Toukyou". While this is nice, it is also highly confusing. Another approach is to use macrons (or less commonly circumflexes)^*ISO 3602 prefers circumflexes, i.e. Tôkyô, which might cause less problems in some European or American pre-Unicode encodings, but is ambiguous with some systems of marking phonemic pitch accent. Besides, even though ISO 3602 is more "official", English-language sources tend not to follow it, since it tends to make pronunciation less intutive for English speakers (e.g. Mount Fuji would be Mount Huzi, and a ninja would be a ninzya). for long vowels—thus the capital city is spelled "Tōkyō". The macron system is officially preferred (the system using digraphs for long vowels was developed for typewriters that couldn't produce diacritics).
  • Make that triple in Russian. Not only Cyrillic similarly lacks the easy method of indicating the long vowels, but the official transcription is also phonemic, not phonetic, and if read by the Russian orthography rules, sounds entirely wrong. Nevertheless, there are a lot of know-it-alls who insist on "correct" reading of the Japanese words, making it an ample Flame Bait. Not to mention that the official Russian name of the city is an artifact of an another, long obsoleted system of transcription, and back in the time when it was still called Edo there were at least four Cyrillic transcriptions of its name.
• While on the matter of Japan, in 19th century, Tōkyō was also known as Tokei, based on now obsolete pronunciation.
  • It used to be called Edo (roughly "estuary", being built on one), renamed when the official capital moved there from Kyōto in 1868. Of course, the move of the "official capital" merely meant that the Emperor moved there; the city had been the seat of government since the 17th century, with the Emperor as a ceremonial figurehead. The period during which Edo was the most powerful city in Japan despite not being the official capital is therefore called the "Edo-jidai" ("Edo Period").
  • The former capital of Japan, Kyōto, was originally called Heian-kyō ("The Capital of Tranquility and Peace"), giving the golden era of the Imperial Court, the Heian-jidai, its name. It was renamed to Kyōto ("Capital City") when that era came to a close. According to The Other Wiki, it was also briefly renamed Saikyō ("western capital") when Edo was renamed. Before it was the capital, it was named Uda.
  • One more example from Japan and one more former capital (or at least one more site of an emperor's palace - Japan has lots of those): Nara, formerly Heijō-kyō.
  • Japan itself is an exonym. The Ancient Japanese called their country Nifon. One of the old Chinese dialect made it Ciphon. The Portuguese who interact with Japanese call them Jippon. Then English speaking people call it Japan. Modern Japanese for the country is Nippon (a formal, slightly archaic reading) or Nihon (a modern, but also more colloquial, variant).
  • Japanese colonies. Ezo becomes Hokkaido and Ryukyuu becomes Okinawa, though, strictly speaking, Ezo traditionally referred not just to Hokkaido (which was often referred to as Matsumae, after the ruling clan based in Hakodate), but to all lands to the North-East that are claimed, but not directly ruled by the Japanese, including Sakhalin and Kurile islands. When the new Imperial government finally begun to develop the island after the Meiji restoration, they had to invent a specific name for it because it did not have one. And the islands to the southwest are still called Ryukyuu archipelago, they're just administered as the Okinawa prefecture, named after the largest and most populous one.
• Formosa (from "Ilha Formosa" (the beautiful island) by early Portuguese explorers) => Taiwan. Of course, that's just the beginning...
  • The state that controls the island of Taiwan is the Republic of China (ROC). Contrast the People's Republic of China (PRC), which rules the Chinese mainland (what most people mean by just "China"). Taiwan and mainland China essentially regard each other as rebellious provinces. The ROC lost a civil war on the mainland and was left in control of only Taiwan; decades later, the de facto situation is that Taiwan and mainland China are separate countries. But both the ROC and PRC consider Taiwan to be an inseparable part of China, so anyone who proposes making the de facto situation on the ground official — or who uses terminology that implies that — will attract the ire of both sides.
  • In international sports, to allow people from Taiwan to compete without implying (a) support for either the PRC or ROC over the other or (b) acceptance of the status quo, they need a team name that both sides can accept. "Chinese Taipei"^note Taipei being the main city of Taiwan and the capital of the ROC is the name in the Olympics and many other major competitions.
  • Naturally Taiwan has independence movements, people who would like to renounce the claims to the mainland and make the de facto situation official. But even if they ever gained a supportive majority in the ROC government, the PRC would respond forcibly to any assertion of independence.
• Another example is the disputed islands in the East China Sea that China, Taiwan, and Japan all claim as their territory. Japan, which currently controls the islands, calls them the Senkaku Islands. Though China and Taiwan are allied in this dispute, they too have different names for the islands. China calls them the Diaoyu Islands while Taiwan calls them the Tiaoyutai Islands.
• The capital city of South Korea was originally Hanseong (City [by] the Han [River]). When Korea was annexed by the Japanese in 1910, it was renamed Keijou or "the Capital City" in Japanese. Korean independence caused it to be renamed Seoul, meaning simply "capital city".
  • However, in the Chinese Language the name was still a cognate of Hanseong (Hànchéng) up to mid-2000s, when Seoul requested the city should be called Shǒu'ěr, a closely phoneticized form, in Chinese. The shock waves at the time caused several local songs to be written to incorporate this event.

South-East Asia

• Ho Chi Minh City: Formerly Saigon, a name still used by a lot of the locals, the name was changed after The Vietnam War, although its three-letter airport code is still SGN.
  • Coincidentally, this removed a possible confusion in Hong Kong, which has a district with the same name in Chinese (西貢, albeit written as Sai Kung in English).
• Myanmar and Thailand, entire countries whose names changed from Burma and Siam, respectively. The former change is highly controversial, with several governments and the opposition not accepting it. This is because the name was changed by a military junta which overthrew the democratically elected Burmese government.
  • Burma/Myanmar also changed the name of the city of Rangoon to Yangon.
  • Burma/Myanmar is a bit of a confusing case, since both names are effectively the same word in Burmese. Myanmar (pronounced Myama) is simply a more formal version of Burma (pronounced Bama). (Blame the British for the "r"s.)
  • The city of Bangkok had its name changed back in the late 1700s. Nobody outside of Thailand uses the new name, which happens to be "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit", which translates to "The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukam". No wonder most people stick to "Bangkok" (if they're foreigners) or abbreviate it to its first two or three words (if they're Thai).
• Singapore — formerly Temasek.
  • An interesting example in that it was permanently changed by a colonist, Sang Nila Utama, who named the place after an animal he reckoned had to be a lion — hence Singa(lion)-pura(city).
• The Philippines, curiously enough, is the exception to the rule, as it's retained its Spanish colonial name, although it was originally lumped with other islands into a group collectively called the Spanish East Indies. Most likely this is attributable to Spanish still being a primary official language, not to mention the fact that the country didn't exist as a political unit before Spanish occupation.
  • During the Martial Law era in the 1970s there were plans to rename the Philippines to "Maharlika", after the precolonial warrior class (but only of Tagalog kingdoms). That proposal has lately resurfaced in the late 2010s as a show of anticolonial symbolism.
  • The entire Philippines itself actually counts—having been named for the Spanish King Philip II. Prior to Spanish colonisation the archipelago was ruled by a number of largely independent but interconnected royal city-states, such as the Kingdoms of Tondo and Maynila, the Rajahnate of Cebu, the Kingdom of Butuan, the Sulu Sultanate, and others.
  • The term "Manila", the name of the current Philippine capital, is a sort of inversion; its meaning has evolved over the centuries. Originally it referred to the precolonial Kingdom of Maynila south of the Pasig River (which itself used to be named "Selurong" or "Seludong"); after the conquistadores arrived, "Manila" became Intramuros, the Citadel City the Spanish built over the ruins of the Kingdom of Maynila. Much later, during the American occupation, Manila's jurisdiction expanded beyond Intramuros and grew to encompass surrounding districts. Today "Manila" has come to refer to both the country's capital and the conglomeration of sixteen cities (and the single municipality of Pateros, and the disputed-over central business district of Bonifacio Global City) situated in the region—which is more accurately called "Metro Manila", but visiting foreigners and out-of-towners don't make the distinction.
  • There's also an old Filipino joke that street names tend to change with every new administration, largely out of a need to satisfy political egos.
    • In the most recent case, several Filipino politicians, in a bid to ingratiate themselves to the (second) Aquino administration, even filed a bill to change the name of EDSA, Metro Manila's main highway^note which itself used to be called Highway 54 in the 1950s, and Junio 19 before that, to Corazon Aquino Expressway (after the mother of the previous President, Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, who was also a former President). In their defence, the Aquinos are intimately associated with the highway, the site of popular protests that threw the Marcos dictatorship out in 1986 and installed Cory Aquino in power. Quite a number of Filipinos continue to believe, however, and not without good reason, that the politicians pushing the name change have a slight case of Skewed Priorities, given much more urgent issues like disaster management, poverty, and of course their own corruption—not to mention the monstrous daily traffic jams and train breakdowns now a feature of present-day EDSA.
    • The bill never passed, however, and there are no plans so far to refile it in the 17th Congress (that is, the Congress that assumed office after the May 2016 elections).
  • A few major streets may or may not have changed names for ostensibly nationalist reasons. For instance, Dewey Boulevard^note originally built under the name "Cavite Boulevard" during American rule proper around The Roaring '20s, and also briefly renamed Heiwa Boulevard under the Japanese occupation, which borders Manila Bay, was later renamed Roxas Boulevard, after the Philippine President Manuel Roxas. Ironically the said President was extremely subservient towards American interests—when the Americans granted the Philippines its formal "independence" in 1946, Roxas was promptly installed as the Republic's first chief executive, and in order to finance the rebuilding of the country after the devastation of World War II, he had to play nice with the U.S. government. (The American legacy associated with Dewey/Roxas Boulevard is still evident in the fact that the U.S. Embassy is still headquartered there.)
  • The barangay of 1896th Street in General Trias, Cavite was formerly known as 96th Street, but was later renamed to commemorate Andres Bonifacio who once resided in the village during the Philippine Revolution, though residents would sometimes colloquially refer to the street under its old name.
• Indonesia:
  • The country itself, known before 1945 as Dutch East Indies.
  • Before that collectively (Indonesia as a national identity didn't exist until Dutch colonization) as Nusantara (Lands in Between [referring to Indonesia's position "between" South China Sea and Indian Ocean and role as trade hub]). Another name was Majapahit, the only pre-colonial Indonesian state whose territorial expanse matched the Dutch rule (in fact, it's actually larger, spanning parts of modern-day Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. However, it was also much looser, because Majapahit seemed to consider nominal tributaries enough to claim lands as their own).
  • Sunda Kelapa received the Sanskrit name Jayakarta ("accomplished victory") after Fatahillah, the general of the Sultanate of Demak, defeated the Portuguese in the 16th century. When the Dutch took over a century later, they gave it the name Batavia (after the Batavii, a Germanic people whom the Dutch consider as their ancestors). When Japan took over, Jayakarta was restored, albeit shortened to "Jakarta".
  • The country's second largest city, Surabaya, was called Hujung Galuh before the 14th century.
  • One of Jakarta's satellite cities, Bogor, was called Buitenzorg during the Dutch era. And before the Dutch arrived, when it was the capital of a precolonial kingdom, it was Pakuan Pajajaran.
  • Papua Barat to Irian Barat (Barat means "West" in Indonesian) to Irian Jaya then changed back to the local preferred name Papua. Western literature still calls it "West Papua", but in Indonesia, Papua Barat technically refers to a province split off from Papua in 1999.
  • Makassar, the largest city in Sulawesi, was renamed Ujung Pandang ("the end of the view") during the authoritarian rule of Suharto from 1971 to 1999, because the government considered the former name as too ethnic (the name originated from the Makassarese ethnic group, the native inhabitants of the area). It was restored after he fell from power.
• Portuguese Timor: Timor Timur (Indonesian for East Timor) since 1976 to 1999 and after that Timor-Leste (which also means East Timor, but in Portuguese).
• Batang Berjuntai, a town in Malaysia was renamed to Bestari Jaya.
  • Lots of other examples in Malaysia too, where English city/town/road names were replaced with Malay ones. One entire state in one case: as mentioned above, British North Borneo became Sabah. Its state capital as well: Jesselton became Kota Kinabalu. Averted in some cases: George Town, the capital of Penang, though there is a common Malay name (Tanjung).
  • Malaysia as a whole country counts as well. It was the Federation of Malaya when independence was gained in 1957. The country name was change to Malaysia in 1963 when British North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore joined the federation.
• Cambodia was (briefly) renamed to Democratic Kampuchea during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. This didn't last long.

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