Why so many Asian cities adopt an alias

KRUNG THEP MAHA NAKHON may be a mouthful, but it is less likely to provoke sniggering among those with a teenage mindset than its better-known alternative, “Bangkok”. That is one interpretation for guidance published on February 16th by the Office of the Royal Society, Thailand’s answer to the Académie Française. A dense press release noted that this pithy four-word version of the much longer formal Thai name for the country’s capital should be the standard for official purposes and should be used when writing in Roman script, too.

Some Thais criticised the government for abruptly changing how their capital is known around the world. But it is hardly the first to consider rebranding a world-famous city. Politicians have long loved to rename places to suit their whims. Rarely do citizens clamour for change.

Often a city’s name is changed to shed colonial or other unpleasant memories. Among the best-known is Bombay, named by the dastardly British, which became Mumbai in honour of a local goddess, Mumbadevi. Batavia, the Roman name for part of the Netherlands, became Jakarta when the Dutch left. Frunze, commemorating a prominent Bolshevik, became Bishkek as the Soviet Union crumbled. Equally common are simply tweaks to spelling to reflect local pronunciation: Kanpur not Cawnpore, for instance, or...