26-02-2023, 06:44 PM
(26-02-2023, 12:26 AM)Stuart Wrote: I've never met anyone in the Czech Republic who refers to the country as Czechia (or Česko).
Czechia is a short-form English version introduced in 2016 by the Czech Government which has generally been ignored by the population. The official name of the country remains Česká Republika (Czech Republic). A Czech friend of mine got quite annoyed when he noticed that Google Earth referred to his home country as Czechia.
The official name remains the same because it's the long form name. A bit like how the official name of France is the French Republic, a lot of countries are like this. Introducing 'Czechia' is essentially correcting a long term error as almost all other languages already have shorter name for the country. It's still early days for the name and I'm sure it will grow in popularity as it becomes more normal.