Tired of foreigners garbling the pronunciation, politicians in Prague have put forward a proposal to change the country’s name to the shorter “Czechia” instead.

They hope the new name will be used in the way “France” is the established shortened version of the French Republic. But instead it has sparked a backlash and accusations they have actually made things more complicated.

“I disagree with the proposal to call us ‘Czechia’. I do not want our country to be confused with Chechnya,” Karla Šlechtová, Czech minister for regional development, wrote on Twitter amid a chorus of online mirth and mocking at the comic potential of the new name.

Backed by Bohuslav Sobotka, the Czech Republic’s prime minister, as well as the country’s president and some leading parties, Czechia’s supporters say the new name is shorter, catchier and simpler to spell — making it easier to use in branding campaigns for companies, sports teams and tourism marketing.

“It’s not good when a country does not have any clearly defined symbols, or cannot say clearly what its name is,” Lubomir Zaoralek, foreign minister, said as he announced the plan.
“When we are talking about the good name of the country there should not be any doubts about what the precise name should be, for example in foreign languages . . . That is what we are dealing with.”

But others suggested the name change would mean more people confuse the central European country that has become a favourite destination for weekend breaks with the war-torn republic in southern Russia more famous for a violent insurgency.

The Czech Republic, which has been known by a variety of names over the centuries, has been somewhat insecure about its name in international circles since the 1993 division of Czechoslovakia that led to its separation from Slovakia.

Export bottles of the local Pilsner Urquell beer say it is brewed in “Czech”, the word that international bankers or foreign officials typically use to describe the country when speaking in English. Others still make the mistake of using Czechoslovakia.

Czechia, pronounced Check-iya, beat off competition inside government from the less poetic “Czechlands” and the historical but contentious “Bohemia” to be proposed as the country’s new name.

If approved by the country’s parliament, supporters hope the new name can be accepted by the UN in time for Czechia to grace the outfits worn by the country’s athletes at this summer’s Olympic Games in Brazil.

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