Changing a city's name
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What’s in a name? It’s something that Shakespeare’s Juliet pondered. But what’s in the name of a city? And what are the economic and social costs for a city which opts to change it’s name? Lots have done so down the years – New Amsterdam became New York City and Istanbul became Contantinople. Last year, the residents of Asbestos in Canada choose a new name for their city. And back in February, the South African city of Port Elizabeth became Gqeberha. Matthew Davies speaks to Christian Martin an activist who pushed for that name change, as well as local mayor, Nqaba Bhanga, who strongly resisted it. Business owner, David Stopforth, tells Business Daily that he’s been left counting the cost of the name change to his small print firm. Meanwhile, Andy Marchant from Tom Tom says changing place names is not an altogether easy process for the satellite navigation companies. And Tirthankar Roy, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, ponders whether part of the essence of a city’s past is lost when it changes its name.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, my name is Matthew Davis, and the name of this program is Business Daily. |
| 0:07.1 | And the name of the city that this program is coming from is London. |
| 0:11.1 | And while London has been called London for at least a thousand years, |
| 0:15.8 | you may be listening in a city that's changed its name far more recently. |
| 0:20.6 | How do I say the new name for Port Elizabeth? |
| 0:24.6 | Ke, behehe. If you break it up by saying, |
| 0:27.6 | with your full tongue clicking against your palate. |
| 0:31.6 | There you go. |
| 0:33.6 | But what's in a name, and does it matter when a city changes it? |
| 0:38.7 | Cities always reflect diversity, not the triumph of one ethnic group over the others. |
| 0:45.1 | And by changing names, you destroy the memory of that diversity. |
| 0:49.2 | Politics and economics of name-changing cities here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:04.1 | Located in the Eastern Cape, Port Elizabeth was founded in 1820 by British settlers. |
| 1:09.9 | As a result, the city has a colonial feel to it, |
| 1:12.6 | with many old buildings and museums to visit. Port Elizabeth in South Africa's eastern Cape |
| 1:18.4 | province. The city sits just beyond the eastern end of the garden route, the road that hugs |
| 1:24.0 | the country's southern coast amid spectacular scenery. About 500 miles east of Cape Town, |
| 1:30.4 | Port Elizabeth and the surrounding Nelson Mandela Bain municipality is home to more than a million |
| 1:35.8 | people, and before the pandemic, regularly attracted 16 million tourists a year. |
| 1:42.4 | Often referred to as the friendly city, Port Elizabeth has the fifth largest population in South Africa |
| 1:47.8 | and offers a wide range of established shopping, dining and leisure activities to choose from. |
| 1:52.7 | But all the city's attractions and world-class beaches are no longer in Port Elizabeth or PE. |
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