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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-in-a-name? dept.

Swaziland is no more:

A landlocked, rural nation in southern Africa, Swaziland has significant problems. Nearly a third of the country's population lives in extreme poverty, and about as many are infected with H.I.V., one of the world's highest prevalence rates for the virus. Life expectancy is low, around 50. A recent drought and an infestation of armyworms, an invasive species, devastated crops.

So the kingdom's 1.4 million residents might have been surprised on Thursday when King Mswati III, one of the world's few remaining absolute monarchs, announced the news: The country will henceforth be known as eSwatini, the kingdom's name in the local language. (It means "land of the Swazis" in the Swazi — or siSwati — tongue.)

The king, who has reigned since 1986, announced the name change — an adjustment, really — during a ceremony in the city of Manzini on Thursday to mark his 50th birthday.

Many African countries upon independence "reverted to their ancient, native names," The Associated Press quoted the king as saying. "We no longer shall be called Swaziland from today forward."

According to Reuters, Mswati argued that the kingdom's name had long caused confusion. "Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland," the king said, according to Reuters.

Also at BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43821512.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Tuesday April 24 2018, @03:49PM (2 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday April 24 2018, @03:49PM (#671195)

    My first thought was that they had sold naming rights of the country to some Internet company, like the GoldenPalace.com monkey [wikipedia.org]. eWhatever usually stands for "electronic", doesn't it?

    Or it's a hip and trendy new kind of martini SWAT teams like to drink

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:03PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @07:03PM (#671274)

    e and i are common prefixes in bantu langugaes, not sure what it does but i suspect denotes a noun or something like that

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @06:20AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @06:20AM (#671528)

      Likely similar to Botswana as the name of the country and Setswana as the name of the majority language. Bantu languages use prefixes where others use suffixes.