The City With The Most Name Changes

Laibach?

My name-ah Borat

Bro got hacked many times so he had to change his name.

Kazakhstan mentioned! 🇰🇿 ❤️ 🐺

🇰🇿 ❤️ 🐺

🇰🇿 ❤️ 🐺

🇰🇿🇰🇿🇰🇿🇰🇿🇰🇿🇰🇿🇰🇿🇰🇿

(It's an ironic use of the wolf image. I am not a panturkic nationalist. Hello from Kazakhstan. Peace for all! ❤❤❤)

Great video 📼
I wonder if you'll do a video about the place that have been No Man's Land for a time? For example, South West Louisiana became a No Man's Land, because of the Louisiana Purchase to the USA 🇺🇸 from France 🇫🇷 , and it has very close to the Spanish 🇪🇸 territory in North America. (Which is now Texas)

The change from Nur-Sultan back to Astana probably is because of the scandals associated with Nazarbayev. It's probably because of the corruption considering that a giant monorail system (alongside hundreds of other projects) is still not finished. It's probably going to be built soon with all the loans from China but the corruption associated with Nazarbayev won't dissappear any time soon. I remember when the situation got so heated that there were rumors that he fled the country, no wonder so many want his name forgotten.

I saw the title and thought you were going to say St Petersburg, Russia (Previously Petrograd, Leningrad and St Petersburg.).

Your acent is very distinct. [example how you say "Thank you'wa] What is it called. Name of your regional dialect? Love your videos!

There is a place in Netherlands who has a official name that got a Nickname/shortend name and then that name became the official name on signs.
Its the city of Den Haag. Our political city where our government building is. (No its not The Hague and no its not our second capital its only Amsterdam that is our capital).
The official name for the city is S’gravenhage meaning noblemen/earls (graven) huntingground/hedge (hage).
Then the name was colloquially named Den Haag meaning (The Huntingground/Hedge) and its now officially on signs, maps and other important forms. Except marriage forms and others. Then they use the official name.
Btw Den is a old dutch meaning “The” nobody uses Den its only De

I seem to remember the name changed back to Astana when the government was overthrown in 2022?

Wiki for Russian renamed towns has:

Ust-Sheksna → Rybansk → Rybnaya Sloboda (1504) → Rybnoy → Rybinsk (1777) → Shcherbakov (1946) → Rybinsk (1957) → Andropov (1984) → Rybinsk (1989)

Constantinople getting changed to Istanbul is still the most noticeable name change a city has gotten in my opinion.

Name (Change) Explain

It's like Main Street

There is also Bratislava - Pressburg - Poszony, which changed its name a few times.

Kazakhstan didn’t leave the USSR, the USSR left Kazakhstan

Fun fact: Kyoto (京都) means "capital city" in Japanese. When the capital was moved to what was previously Edo, it was renamed to Tokyo (東京) "Eastern capital." Note that the "kyo" portions of both city names are what denote the term capital.

Tokyo means eastern capital. The original capital, Kyoto, just means capital. Seoul also just means capital.

I would love to see a video about countries that have been colonized who are working to de-westernize their important cities and place names. Turkiye is one example that comes to mind, and the slow process that New Zealand is currently undergoing to change their name back to Aotearoa (looks hard to say, but not so bad to pronounce once you hear a NZ native say it). I find the topic really interesting, especially when the name change is for a very well known place (such as for tourism) and there is a significant campaign to educate the public of the new name. There are some popular tourist locations very well know to Australians that have changed names, Ayers Rock being one (now Uluru) and very recently another popular Aussie tourist spot Fraser island switched to K’gari. I think with tourist places it may also be driven by commercial rebranding pressures (Fraser island had gotten a little stale as a local tourist destination and pretty much “relaunched” as K’gari). With country names it seems more about respecting original inhabitants. I know it is a very broad topic but you said broad suggestions were allowed! Anyway, I hope this suggestions leads to a few ideas.

Edit: By the way, if you type Aotearoa into google maps it already recognizes the name as new zealand, even though it is still named new zealand on the actual map

You could do the towns that have changed their names the most times in different countries.

Ulaanbaator has been called in the past Urguu, Nomiin Khuree, Ikh Khuree, Niislel Khuree.

Lygos would be a good one.
Wait, actually Byzantion.
Oh, I mean Augusta Antonina.
I'm sorry, New Rome.
No wait, Constantinople.
Shoot, language changed, Kostantiniyye.
Hold on, Istanbul.



There we go, hopefully it doesn't change again.

While it hasn't technically changed it's name so far, Pretoria, South Africa, has been in a long fight about it's name. Normally, the city's metropolitan area is named after the city itself, like the New York City Metropolitan area. But Pretoria is different. The metropolitan area is officially called the City of Tswane since 2000. Ever since then there has been calls by the ruling ANC-party to abolish the old Afrikaner names of the big cities, starting with Pretoria. Unfortunately for the ANC, Pretoria is one of the 3 Capital Cities of South Africa, serving as the administrative capital and the seat of the Parliament, meaning if they want to change the name, Parliament would have to have a vote on it as well as the City Council. There has been strong opposition from the mostly Afrikaner residents of the city to keep the name as is, since it's home to some UNESCO World Heritage Sites and that changing the name would be pointless.

I think your sympathy is misplaced. There tend to be few signs that use the city name. It is the people responsible for the huge number of official documents that use the name that will have the nightmarish task of replacing all of them quickly.

Kazakhstan is the peak of human evolution, so it's forgivable

Kazakhstan was the last soviet republic to leave the USSR, even Russia parted ways before them 😂

😅😅

Kazakhstan did not leave the USSR, the USSR left Kazakhstan

When it comes to naming things, humans are a dull but practical lot. Once upon a time, when humans were exploring this vast world and found a new bit of land, they called it Newfoundland. In the Great Smoky Mountains of America, there is a road called New Found Gap Road, presumably called such because they found a new gap in the with which to cross the mountains.

I love trivial or self-descriptive place names, like Central African Republic, South Africa, Tokyo, Northern Territory and so on

There's a swingin' town I know called, Capital City.
People stop and scream hello in, Capital City.
It's the kind of place that makes a bum feel like a king.
And it makes a king feel like some nutty, cuckoo, super-king.
It's against the law to frown in, Capital City.
You'll caper like a stupid clown when you chance to see,
Fourth Street and 'D'! Yeah!
Once you get a whiff of it, you'll never want to roam.
From Capital City, my home sweet, yeah!
Capital City, that happy-tal city,
It's Capital City, my home sweet swingin' home!

I think Astana is good 👍

Some corrections:

People inhabited the Akmoly region from very old times. Kazakhs were nomads, so there were only contemporary villages.

The insk in Akmolinsk is a RUSSIAN thing. In Kazakh “Akmola city” would be “Aqmoly Qala”.

Tselina in tselinograd means virgin lands, but to be more precise it means lands that were not cultivated for farming. Soviets tried to divide our homeland and made so called “Tselinnyi Krai” in the North to what they planned to send many Slavic people. There are still many russians, but it’s not a problem anymore. And I hope it wouldn’t be

Names of Istanbul would be a good topic.

Suggest a topic for the next Monday video, which won't actually be until 2025!