Countries change their names for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it’s for political purposes or to encourage a sense of national pride.
The switch might be motivated by marketing considerations and occasionally it could be the result of a royal decree.
A rebranding exercise also provides a clean start after independence, an attempt to eliminate negative incidents or memory from the past.
Here is a list of African countries that changed their names:
Dahomey to Benin
Dahomey was a great pre-colonial monarchy that existed in what is now the Benin Republic in West Africa.
The kingdom also included areas of modern-day Togo and southern Nigeria. The talented female warriors who served as royal bodyguards were well-known in the Dahomey Kingdom.
Under the leadership of Mathieu Kerekou, the nation changed its name from Dahomey to the Benin Republic fifteen years after gaining independence in 1975.
The name change was compared to Kerekou’s belief in Marxist-Leninist ideology.
Zaire to the Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, for almost three decades, was known as Zaire, derived from the former name of the Congo River.
Congo Free State, Belgium Congo, and Congo-Leopoldville were all official titles for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960. From 1971 to 1997 the country was officially the Republic of Zaire, a change made by then ruler Gen. Mobutu Sese Seko to give the country what he thought was a more authentic African name.
“Zaire” is a variation of a term meaning “great river” in local African languages; like the country’s current name, it refers to the Congo River, which drains a large basin that lies mostly in the republic.
Unlike Zaire, however, the name Congo has origins in the colonial period, when Europeans identified the river with the kingdom of the Kongo people, who live near its mouth.
Following the overthrow of Mobutu in 1997, the country’s name prior to 1971, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was reinstated.
Bechuanaland to Botswana
Botswana was once known as Bechuanaland, a British colony. The British gave the nation the name Bechuanaland on March 31, 1885, when it became one of their possessions.
Until September 30, 1966, the area was governed by the Bechuanaland Protectorate. After independence, the country changed its name to Botswana.
Botswana is named after the country’s major ethnic group, the “Tswana,” which is also known as “Bechuana” in an earlier variant spelling.
Gold Coast to Ghana
Ghana was known as the Gold Coast until March 1957.
When the Portuguese arrived in Ghana in the 15th century, they discovered so much gold between the rivers Ankobra and Volta that they dubbed the area Mina, which means “mine”. The English colonists subsequently recognized the Gold Coast as their own.
Because it substituted a reference based on European exploitation with the name of a great, former West African kingdom, Kwame Nkrumah offered ‘Ghana’ as the name for an independent Gold Coast.
Nkrumah advocated for a resurrection of Pan-Africanism, in which autonomous African countries would embrace their own local traditions to create a variety of nationalist, socialist, and even communist forms of life free of European colonialism’s taint. ‘Ghana’ was a fantastic match for that perspective.
Upper Volta to Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso is a landlocked nation in West Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d’Ivoire to the southwest.
Formerly Haute-Volta it was a colony of French West Africa, before becoming the Republic of Upper Volta after it gained independence in 1960.
But the nation ecperienced a new beginning in 1984 when it was renamed by then President Thomas Sankara using native words meaning “the land of upright and honest people.” The inhabitants are known as Burkinabé.
Swaziland to Eswatini
When Swaziland celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from the British, its king decided to change its name to Eswatini.
The 2018 decision of King Mswati III follows the tradition in Africa of reverting to the traditional names of countries before the colonisers arrived.
The name Swaziland was derived from the name of the local people, the Swazi, who in turn had named themselves after King Mswati II, who unified the kingdom during his reign in the mid-19th Century.
Upon achieving independence, some African nations, such as Lesotho or Botswana, chose to immediately rename themselves in their local languages. Others, such as Swaziland and Kenya, did not.
In English, the name ‘eSwatini’ means ‘Land of the Swazis’, so it is not a particularly dramatic change. But for many citizens, it is a point of key cultural significance, as they see keeping half their country’s name in English as an affront to their culture and independence.
The king also gave another, more surprising reason for the name change: he claimed people around the world kept calling the country ‘Switzerland’. So, he wanted to avoid the recurrent confusion between the countries’ names.
Nyasaland to Malawi
In 1889, a British protectorate was created in this African country. By 1907, it had adopted the official name “Nyasaland,” which was used until 1964, when the protectorate was abolished, and Malawi gained independence becoming a republic two years later.
The country’s name was changed from Nyasaland, which meant “wide waters,” to Malawi, which means “flaming waters,” to signify the transition from the colonial past.
The name comes from a native phrase that means “sunbeams glinting off Lake Nyasa.”
Rhodesia to Zimbabwe
Rhodesia was a colonial name after the renowned coloniser Cecil John Rhodes.
Between 1953 and 1963, Southern Rhodesia was joined with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
The country achieved international recognition after its independence in April 1980 as the Republic of Zimbabwe and was renamed Zimbabwe.
In one of the Zimbabwean languages, Shona, Zimbabwe is derived from the word Dzimba-Dza-Mabwe, translated from the Karanga dialect as “large houses of stone” (Dzimba = plural of imba, “house”; Mabwe = plural of Bwe, “stone”).
