PRAGUE, Czech Republic, April 15 (UPI) — The leaders of the Czech Republic want to partially change the name of their homeland simply to Czechia, officials said.
Leaders say they don’t want to change the formal name of the country, just the shorter name, because they are tired of people getting it wrong, calling it Czecho or Czechland. They also hope to have it changed in time for the summer Olympics in Rio.
The country’s leaders have requested a formal change in the United Nations database of country names. Currently it is Czech.
“Our hope is that this step will overcome the problems we face with distorting the name and that the correct terms will dissolve into general knowledge,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The country was a longtime part of Austria-Hungary, then, after World War I, became the western portion of Czechoslovakia. The country made an amicable split with Slovakia in 1993. Though Czechia might have been used in some way as early as 1634, the new informal name could cause its own problems and be confused with small Russian republic, Chechnya.
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