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News & Current Events May 13, 2026 at 2:21 AM

Nauru parliament signs off on country's name change, referendum to come

Posted by lbktort

Nauru parliament signs off on country's name change, referendum to come
RNZ
Nauru parliament signs off on country's name change, referendum to come
A national referendum is set to follow to complete the constitutional procedures.
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26 Comments

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xmuskorx May 13, 2026 +176
dear Journalists, you should put the new name in the title. it's "Naoero."
176
ki-01000 May 13, 2026 +41
Naoero sounds like a japanese h***** im sorry
41
Jestersage May 13, 2026 +12
Now Ero
12
TruthOk8742 May 13, 2026 +10
That name is guaranteed to bring at least a smile to many Japanese people who happen to hear it 😅 Instead of calling a doujinshi "wholesome", maybe we could now say it’s "naoero" (honest p***)?
10
Blu3Yeti May 13, 2026 +11
Well the h***** virus is spreading Sooooo......
11
Toginator May 13, 2026 +2
UwU? What are you doing Step-older brother? Pounces on you. Rawr.
2
BluntInMeBlunnies May 13, 2026 +1
Just wait until you here that there's a town in Australia called Eromanga
1
PurbulentTriest May 13, 2026 +6
I can hear it in Aussie.
6
sambare May 13, 2026 +1
Disappointed they didn't go with "Naruto". So much easier to spell and pronounce.
1
Savage_Whiskers May 13, 2026 +19
Making mental note for my next trivia bar quiz!
19
eternalityLP May 13, 2026 +12
Shame, I loved the old name, since it means 'laughter' in Finnish.
12
Norwester77 May 13, 2026 +8
Respelling, really. It’s the same name.
8
The_Overlander May 13, 2026 -1
More places should do it ngl
-1
BluntInMeBlunnies May 13, 2026 +1
It's a bit of a useless and frankly self-absorbed gesture. Different languages have different phonetics, this is an inescapable fact of life, and with different phonology and phonetics comes slightly different ways of spelling and pronouncing names. Germany alone has like 10+ different names across different languages.
1
Rethious May 13, 2026 +1
\>“In January, the government said the name Nauru emerged because Naoero could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues. "\[It\] was changed not by our choice, but for convenience," the statement said. "Other nations have also changed their country names to better reflect and honour their cultures and languages, and bring their people together, such as Eswatini, Türkiye, and closer to home - Chuuk." I find these cases to be strange—pretty much every country is called an exonym or has its pronunciation altered.
1
BluntInMeBlunnies May 13, 2026 +1
Yeah it's not like you see Finland complaining that nobody calls them Suomi, or how Japan's name is actually supposed to be Nihon in their own language.
1
JustSomeBloke5353 May 13, 2026 +11
The people of Nauru are sovereign and have the right to remain so. I do wonder however if free association - on the Niue or Cook Islands model - might be a better long term outcome for their people.
11
FKJVMMP May 13, 2026 +2
They’re functionally an Australian vassal state already, formalising the relationship couldn’t make things any worse. Whether Australia wants that is a different story.
2
PhantasmologicalAnus May 13, 2026 +1
Whatever gets the most handouts, probably. They can be as sovereign as they want on foreign donations and selling fishing rights, now the phosphates dried up.
1
Gloomy-Restaurant-42 May 13, 2026 +9
They should call it "Nauru 2: Electric Denigomodu".
9
mischief_scallywag May 13, 2026 -8
Corny
-8
Lpreddit May 13, 2026 +9
Whenever a new country is created or a country is renamed, I think “New interesting answers for Pointless”
9
Novel-Lifeguard6491 May 13, 2026 +2
Germany colonized the island in the 1880s, Australia administered it until 1968, and somewhere in between, the country's name got simplified for the comfort of people who didn't live there. 80% of the island has since been rendered uninhabitable by phosphate mining that made outsiders wealthy and left Naoero with one of the most degraded landscapes on earth.
2
Drongo17 May 13, 2026 +26
The locals were also made fabulously rich from the mining, unfortunately this did not translate into long term wealth.
26
count023 May 13, 2026 +16
fun fact, more than once Australia offered ot make it up to them at Australia's cost by relocating the entire Nauru population to Curtis island off the coast of queensland, would have been full citizens of australia and has full regiona soverignty over the island, and they rejected it every time.
16
stationagent May 13, 2026 +1
I've heard of every country except this one and now it has a new name.
1
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