Hey, all you guys out there who finally managed to start calling the Czech Republic by its proper name, instead of Czechoslovakia (the country split from its Slovak brethren back in 1993), now it’s time to learn a brand new alias for the former Warsaw Pact member.
Yes, that country’s booze-guzzling, chain-smoking president, Miloš Zeman, felt that the Czech Republic — two words and four whole syllables — was too much of a mouthful for foreign investors and travel agents to pronounce, so he came up with a shorter, more diction-friendly moniker for his nation: Czechia.
Last April, Zeman pushed the approval of the name through the Central European country’s parliament and even went to the United Nations and had the organization’s roster of members adjusted to reflect the tampered-with appellation.
Zeman also filed formal requests with the U.S. and British governments to start using Czechia in official references to his country. (Both graciously complied, but their media did not.)
And to seal the deal, Zeman set up an internet site called go-czechia.com.
But there were a few people that Zeman did not consult about the rechristening — mainly the entire Czech population.
So, eight months after the relabeling, practically no one — foreign or national — uses the country’s new name.
Czechia, which does have a nice roll-off-the-tongue twang to it, just doesn’t seem to be grabbing the public’s fancy.
Old habits run deep, and while the switch to Czech Republic from Czechoslovakia had obvious nationalist and political incentives, the adoption of the Czechia tag had no such motivation.
So try as he might, Zeman could not get his 10.5 million citizens to articulate the new name.
Why?
To begin with, the name Czechia has some negative political implications for a nation that spent a generation under the thumb of the Soviet Union.
For many Czechs, the new agnomen sounded too much like the word Chechnya, referring to the Chechen Republic, which is still a precinct of Russia.
As one Czech put it: “The word Czechia just sounds too Eastern, and we have been struggling for the last two decades to rebrand ourselves as Western Europeans.”
Moreover, names and language are, by definition, organic traditions that evolve and adapt at their own pace, not in accordance with government mandates.
If the Czech people are happy with the name Czech Republic — as they seemingly are — then no presidential or parliamentarian decree is going to make them start calling their country Czechia.
So, while Zeman may be peddling his country’s new name around the globe, his citizens have settled into a de facto boycott of the unenthralling sobriquet.
And if they refuse to call the Czech Republic by its new name, the rest of the world will follow suit.
Despite Zeman’s well-planned efforts, I guess you can forget about what I said at the start of this column and go back to referring to the Land of Stories as the Czech Republic.
But, please, please, please, don’t call it Czechoslovakia.
Thérèse Margolis can be reached at [email protected].
