The official change of the country’s name was first implemented on Macedonian government website, which will be followed by the replacement of signage at the various border crossings due to take place today.

The flag of  NATO was raised in front of the Macedonian government building in an official ceremony held on the 12th February 2019 to mark Macedonia’s signing of the accession protocol to join the military alliance. The photographers documented the removal of old signs and the set-up of new ones. There is a five-year period laid out in the Prespes Agreement for all official documents and references to transition to the new name, so one should not expect changes overnight in all aspects of the country’s life.

Changing the Philippines’ name would require a new law and the public’s approval in a referendum, Malacañang said on Tuesday, February 12, 2019, after President Duterte had revived a proposal to rename the Philippines to “Maharlika.”

Proposals to change the name of the Philippines have been around since the 1970s. “Maharlika” is the Filipinos’ “ancient heritage,” long before the arrival of Western colonizers. “Maha” is Sanskrit for “noble” or “great” while “likha” means “create,” thus, Maharlika means “nobly created,” according to the article. But some scholars are opposed to the name change, saying it would disregard Filipinos’ historical roots and national identity.

Immigrating to a new country brings many challenges. For some people, voluntarily adopting a name similar to where someone is living, rather than keeping an original name, is one part of trying to assimilate or fit in with the new community. According to a new study focused on the United States, where anglicized names are more typical, anglicizing ethnic names may reduce bias towards immigrants. The results appear in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Migrants Immigrants Merge Migration Integration

“We do not suggest immigrants to Anglicize their ethnic names in order to avoid discrimination,” says Xian Zhao (University of Toronto), lead author on the study. “This certainly puts the onus on immigrants to promote equity and our previous studies also suggest that Anglicizing names may have negative implications for one’s self-concept.”

A few state demonyms are probably well-known. By demonyms we mean the words you call people or things from a specific state (like “Pennsylvanian”, “Texan” or the entertaining “Michigander”). But not everybody knows that state demonyms follow a regional pattern.

The regional patterns are revealed in this map from Twitter’s OnlMaps where you may find the demonyms recommended by the U.S. Government Publishing Office. It is obvious that states in the same region tend to have the same suffix in their demonym: the old South and the West Coast generally end an “-ian,” New England ends in “-er,” the West in “-an.” A few stray states use “-ite.”