Nauru, the world’s smallest republic, may soon make a big change: renaming itself “Naoero”.
The switch would “more faithfully honour our nation’s heritage, our language, and our identity”, said the president of the Pacific microstate, David Adeang, in a speech to parliament in January.
After Nauru’s parliament passed the proposal unopposed, the island – with an estimated population of 13,000 – will vote in a referendum on whether to make the change official.
“Naoero” – pronounced Now-ero – is the term Nauruans use in their own language. “Nauru” – commonly pronounced Now-roo – became the island’s official name because its Indigenous name “could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues”, the government said, adding it was “changed not by our choice, but for convenience”.
The remote island country – located about 3,000km north-east of Australia, and similar in size to London’s Westminster, at 21 sq km – has a history of name changes.
In 1798 it was christened “Pleasant Island” when sighted by a British seafarer, who was struck by its beauty and the generosity of its people. After Germany annexed the island in 1888, the name “Nauru” entered official records, though variants “Nawodo” and “Navoda Onawero” were also used.
When Australia took over primary administration of the island in 1919 under a League of Nations mandate, it maintained the “Nauru” spelling, which persisted after independence in 1968. In 2001, Australia began to use the island as an offshore detention centre.
For scholars of Indigenous placenames, such changes are never just a matter of spelling. Zoltán Grossman, a professor of geography and Native American studies at Evergreen State College in the US, says changing names has long been part of exercising colonial power.
“Changing placenames has been an integral part of colonialism to erase the presence of the original peoples,” he says. “It’s not just about the names themselves, it’s about who has the power to change the names.”
In arguing for Naoero, the Nauruan government has pointed to other countries that have changed their official names to better reflect local language, including Türkiye (formerly Turkey) and Eswatini (Swaziland). It also cited the nearby Micronesian state Chuuk, which until 1990 was widely known as Truk – another foreign rendering of an Indigenous name.
This “re-Indigenisation” of placenames to reflect local pronunciations is how formerly colonised peoples assert their sovereignty, Grossman says. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to the de-russification of eastern European countries: Byelorussia became Belarus and Moldavia changed to Moldova. India has de-anglicised many city and state names since independence.
Jordan Engel, founder of the Decolonial Atlas, a project to map and document Indigenous placenames, says there is a “growing momentum” to use them for landmarks and places.
“At its core, decolonisation is about self-determination, and one of the most basic expressions of self-determination is being able to speak your language and use your ancestral placenames,” Engel says.
But changing a place’s name is not always straightforward. A petition to change New Zealand to the Māori name of Aotearoa gathered more than 70,000 signatures, but its official use has sparked rows in parliament. Cook Islands has long wrestled with whether to drop the name of the British explorer James Cook.
Nauru’s government declined to comment on the potential name change when approached by the Guardian.
Nauruan Arcmen Willis, a wrestler who has represented Nauru internationally, supports the change; he hopes non-Nauruans people will make the effort to pronounce the new name correctly.
“I want to tell people now how to pronounce it, so it goes around and people would pronounce it right,” Willis says. “It’s good to keep our identity,” he says, “because once it’s gone, there will be no more Nauru or Naoero.”
Unesco officially classifies Nauru’s language – Nauruan or dorerin Naoero – as “severely endangered”. While Nauruans like Willis speak it among friends and family, it is not taught in schools.
Engel says a name change to Naoero can help protect the language for future generations. “Changes like this can play an important role in language revitalisation and cultural continuity.”
While the change may take some time to become official, the name “Naoero” has already been adopted by the postal service, national health service and utility provider. The Australian high commission is using both names in its public communications.
For Nauruans like Willis, the change matters most in how the country is recognised from afar. At home, he says, it carries less weight.
“I feel the same, because it’s only the name change,” he says. “It doesn’t change me.”
