A Year by Year Accounting of Every Country Name Change Within the First Quarter of the 21st Century

Linguist Patrick Foote of Name Explain looked at all the countries that underwent name changes within the first quarter of the 21st century, recounting them on a year-by-year basis. Foote further notes that there are as many reasons for name changes as there are name changes. Countries include the former Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Burma (Myanmar), Burkina (Burkina Faso), the Czech Republic (Czechia), and the Republic of Iceland (Iceland).

Anyway, country names along the shapes of our phones, our attention spans, and fashion choices have changed a lot in the last 25 years, too. Some of these changes are way more noticeable than others. Some simply change a word or two in their big fancy titles, while others have wholesale new names.