King Mswati III Changes Name of Swaziland on His Birthday

I was just looking at the April 19th birthday list last night and noticed that Swaziland’s King Mswati III and actress Ashley Judd were both born the same day. Evidently, the country is celebrating 50 years of independence from Great Britain a little ahead of time (i.e, before September 6th), to coincide with the King also hitting 50. Mswati III chose the occasion to announce that he is changing Swaziland’s name to eSwatini henceforth.

According to reports, King Mswati III announced the change to a packed sports stadium in the city of Manzini. “African countries on getting independence,” he said, “reverted to their ancient names before they were colonised. So from now on the country will be officially be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini.”

The new name means “place of the Swazi” and while English-speakers may think that Swaziland means more or less the same thing, having an English word in their country name is less than ideal to some of its people.

King Mswati III has changed the name of #Swaziland to #eSwatini.
Any thoughts? pic.twitter.com/qyUKjzAp39

— This Is Africa (@ThisIsAfricaTIA) April 19, 2018

Actually, yes. I’m wondering which is the correct spelling: “eSwatini” or “Eswatini,” as in this Face to Face Africa article. Maybe that will be sorted out before we see a clue on the name change on Jeopardy! There have been clues on the names changes of other African countries, such as Benin (Dahomey), Botswana (Bechuanaland) Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), Ghana (Gold Coast), Malawi (Nyasaland) and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).

There has also been some reporting on how the country will no longer be confused with Switzerland. Coincidentally, both countries were the correct response to this Final Jeopardy clue from July 11, 2017: “One in Europe & one in Africa, these 2 landlocked countries start with the same 2 letters & end with the same 4”

One last thought: thank goodness I didn’t buy that big world wall map last week.