« Bottled Brand Naming: A Broken Brand Promise | Main | Online Hotel Naming Affects Brand Name Development Strategies »

July 10, 2009

Eastern Bloc Naming In the News

Renaming games are afoot in the former Eastern Bloc. The mooted, then apparently scotched, plan to rename Leningrad Station has caught the attention of the world.

There could be a move to give it back its czarist, pre-communist name of Nikolaevsky after Tsar Nicholas 1, who was in power when the station opened in 1842.

It seems that there has been a major turn towards renaming pre-Soviet era institutions with Tsarist names in a bid to help Russians feel pride about their past and to put some of the bad memories of the Communist days behind them.

It's not a bad idea. From a Russian point of view, it makes a lot of sense to honor their heritage and the magnificent buildings left behind before the revolution in 1917.

However, sometimes too much of a good thing, well, isn't all that great. In the neighboring Ukraine, there is also a movement to rename Oktyabrskoye Village after Michael Jackson.

The New York Times reports that a member of the regional parliament feels that the name would do honor to the village because Jackson has a "will of iron."

This comes after a suggestion that we rename the Johnson Space Center as Moonwalk Central.

This reminds me of when JFK passed away. There were numerous streets, buildings, towns and other entities named after him. Many of these were then changed back to their original names after a few years.

Technorati Tags: Eastern Bloc, Nikolaevsky, Michael Jackson Naming, Russian Renaming

Posted by William Lozito at July 10, 2009 8:08 AM
Posted to Naming

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.namedevelopment.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4453