There are good reasons to change your name.

Because you don't like it, because it's too long or because you have a different idea of ​​yourself than what resonates in Norbert or Sabine.

Reginald Dwight became Elton John, Hellen Mirren was Ilyena Lydia Vasilievna Mironow, and the German surname Klöckner was often preceded by a Klohocker family going to the registration office.

The longing to be able to reinvent oneself is inherent in the name swap.

Cities and countries are no different.

Place names are particularly attractive to autocrats.

If the political situation changes, the name usually goes to waste.

Russia is probably the world champion here, although the change from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd to Leningrad and back was never a problem for the residents, because they always called their city Piter.

The best-known Turkish name swap is today's Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, formerly Byzantium.

When Erdogan now got the UN to replace the English country name "Turkey" with "Türkiye", he also followed in the footsteps of Iran, which used to be called Persia, as well as Thailand, the former Siam.

People often hoped to distance themselves from the colonial legacy through linguistic emancipation.

Much more respectable than the bald eagle

In the case of Swaziland, today's eSwatini, they also wanted to prevent the FBI from constantly confusing it with Switzerland.

However, Erdogan has added a new dimension to the politically motivated urge to change the name.

His reason is simpler: he is offended.

Even more: offended because turkey is also called turkey in English.

In doing so, he is arguing much less in terms of identity politics than in economic terms, because what he is concerned with is Turkey's “brand value”.

Europeans actually gave the Turks this name because of the guinea fowl that they imported from there - but not the Americans, in reference to the bird that Benjamin Franklin would have liked to see in the coat of arms of the United States and which he attested to be a "much more decent one." bird" than the bald eagle with its "bad moral character".

And how does it continue?

We have a few suggestions ready.

The fact that the name England goes back to the Angles, a Germanic people who lived in today's Schleswig-Holstein, is hardly justifiable - especially after Brexit.

And just because Vespucci once felt reminded of Venice because of the many stilt houses on the north coast of South America, Venezuela no longer has to be called that.

The country name New Zealand is downright grotesque.

No wonder the Maori have long advocated renaming it “Aotearoa”.

Shire wouldn't be a bad idea either.