PLEASE USE OUR NEW NAME
(SAME AS OUR OLD NAME)

A name is important, a symbol of one’s cultural pride and history. When the names of places get changed because of external forces or internal politics, it can be offensive to the people who live there…and sometimes they get to change it back.

THEN…AND NOW: Cape Canaveral

IN BETWEEN: Cape Kennedy

STORY: In 1961 President John F. Kennedy publicly gave NASA a goal and the encouragement to meet that goal: land a man (an American man) on the Moon by the end of the decade. NASA did achieve the goal in 1969, but Kennedy, who was assassinated in November 1963, didn’t live to see it happen. Shortly after Kennedy’s death, his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, suggested to the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, that a good way to memorialize JFK would be to rename NASA’s Launch Operations Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in his honor. Johnson went one better, renaming the entire area after the president. Less than a week after the assassination, on Thanksgiving 1963, Johnson announced that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy. The Department of the Interior (which has to approve name changes) supported the change, but locals never much liked having the region renamed without their input. Ten years later, the Florida state legislature passed a law that renamed Cape Kennedy…Cape Canaveral.

THEN…AND NOW: Kingdom of Cambodia

IN BETWEEN: Kampuchea

STORY: After attaining independence from France in 1953, the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia named itself the Kingdom of Cambodia. In 1970 General Lon Nol staged a military coup to oust Prince Norodom Sihanouk and renamed the country the Khmer Republic, after the name for the predominant ethnic group and language in the area. Pol Pot’s communist group, the Khmer Rouge, defeated Lon Nol’s army and took over in 1975. That began a reign of terror and isolationism, including a brutal genocide to rid the country of any outside or intellectual influence, and gave the Khmer Republic another new name: Democratic Kampuchea. Kampuchea is the Khmer word for Cambodia, but there was little democracy or rule “by the people” under Pol Pot. After an invasion by the Vietnamese overthrew Pol Pot in 1979, the name of the country was changed again, to the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. The United Nations took temporary control of the torn nation in 1989, and in 1993 the monarchy was restored. Prince Norodom Sihanouk returned (he became king), and the country’s name reverted to the Kingdom of Cambodia.

If you’ve never had a haircut, you’re an acersecomic.

A TIP FROM UNCLE JOHN

To legally change your name, you must have a valid reason. Examples: your given name is too cumbersome, or you’re getting married. Invalid reasons: you’re adopting a celebrity’s moniker, or changing your name to avoid debts.

THEN…AND NOW: Cabo Verde

IN BETWEEN: Cape Verde

STORY: This is a tiny nation consisting of 10 small islands off the coast of western Africa, in the Atlantic Ocean. Only about half a million people live there now, but it was once a valuable stopover point between Africa and Europe for traders and shippers. The islands weren’t even inhabited when they were discovered in the mid-1400s. Explorer Antonio de Noli, born in Genoa but sailing for the Portuguese, was the first to make landfall in 1456, and King Afonso V of Portugal made him governor. The collection of islands was named Cabo Verde, or “green cape,” after another Portuguese-controlled landmark of the same name, a cape off the coast of Senegal. Over the centuries, “Cabo Verde” got translated into other languages, and became most commonly known as Cape Verde. By 2013 enough was enough, and the government of the country (it won its independence in 1975) told the United Nations that it was reverting to its official name of the Republic of Cabo Verde.

THEN…AND NOW: St. Petersburg

IN BETWEEN: Leningrad

STORY: In an effort to transform imperial Russia into a wealthy nation of high repute on par with the nations of western Europe, such as France, Austria, and the Netherlands, Russian czar Peter the Great took over the small village of Nyen in 1703, intending to make it the new national capital. By 1710 he’d moved his family and the federal government there, and had also given Nyen a new name: St. Petersburg, or rather, Sankt Pieter Burkh—essentially a Dutch name, reflecting Peter’s reverence for the status of western Europe. (The czar technically named it after St. Peter, the apostle, but it was an open secret that he’d also named it after himself.) Two hundred years later, Germany and Russia found themselves rival combatants in World War I. The Russian government renamed the city Petrograd, which means “Peter’s City” in Russian. Then in 1917 came the Bolshevik Revolution, which violently expelled Peter the Great’s descendant, Czar Nicolas, from power. A new socialist government was organized by the leader of the Bolsheviks, and Russia became the Soviet Union. After Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, the name of Petrograd was changed again, this time to Leningrad. The Soviet Union (and Soviet communism) collapsed in 1991, and in the first free elections that followed, Leningrad’s citizens approved a referendum to change the name back to St. Petersburg.

Behind the times: The White House didn’t get Wi-Fi until 2012.