Do you know
their old names?

Many major countries and travel cities were renamed since the end of the Second World War (1945). Below are some of the most famous changes.

I divide this page into three sections.

Renamed major countries
Renamed major travel cities
National breakups

I bold faced the current names. The former names are normal faced.

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Renamed
major countries

Partial list

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Byelorussia: now Belarus

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British Honduras: Belize

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Burma: Myanmar

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Ceylon: Sir Lanka

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East Pakistan: Bangladesh

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French Sudan: Mali

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Gold Coast: Ghana

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Portuguese East Africa: Mozambique

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Northern Rhodesia: Zambia

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Netherlands East Indies: Indonesia

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Rhodesia: Zimbabwe

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Siam: Thailand

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South-West Africa: Namibia

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Spanish Sahara: Western Sahara

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Transjordan: Jordan

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Upper Volta: Burkina Faso

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Zaire: Democratic Republic of the Congo

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Renamed
major cities

Partial list

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Bombay (India): Mumbai

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Calcutta (India): Kolkata

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Madras (India): Chennai

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Kristiania (Norway): Oslo

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Rangoon (Myanmar): Yangon

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Saigon (Vietnam): Ho Chi Minh City

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Leningrad (Russia): St Petersburg

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National breakups

Partial list

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USSR: Split into many independent
nations in the 1990s including ...
Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia

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Yugoslavia: Divided into these
countries in the 1990s ...
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia (includes Kosovo)

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Czechoslovakia: Split in 1993 into ...
Czech Republic and Slovakia

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Click

How to pronounce country names

What country names mean

English vs foreign spellings

for more pointers

Hillman Wonders site map

World's Top 100 Wonders

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