Letter to BS: Global trend reflects place name changes common in abroad

What do such name changes mean in reality? Nothing much, as the experience so far suggests

Place name changes are far more common abroad than the cursory reference to them in "Decoded" (December 5). Many newly independent countries reverted to their supposed original names from the colonial ones: Ghana from Gold Coast, Zimbabwe from Southern Rhodesia, Guyana from British Guiana, Sri Lanka from Ceylon, Myanmar from Burma are only a few such changes. Cities too have changed names: Christiania to Oslo, St Petersburg (Petrograd, Russia) to Leningrad and back to St Petersburg, Salisbury to Harare, Constantinople to Istanbul, Elisabethville to Lumumbashi, Lyallpur to Faisalabad, are among the many that readily come to mind. Most non-English speaking