President Zeman revives debate on one-word name for the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic –or Czechia – a dilemma that Czechs have been unable to resolve since the 1993 Czech-Slovak divorce left the country without a one-word name that would roll of the tongue easily and that the public could identify with. On a state visit to Israel this week, President Miloš Zeman revived a twenty-year-old debate on an informal English name for his country, publicly thanking his host, President Simon Perez, for using the informal name Czechia rather than the official Czech Republic. I discussed the proposal with the head of the Czech Language Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Karel Oliva.