A Velvet reconciliation?

Not so fast. While I've been lecturing people for several years now to cease using the term "Czechoslovakia" with the present tense, Czech Premier Jiri Paroubek seems more willing to bend to the intractability of the name abroad.

Paroubek has proposed that the successor states -- that is, the Czech and Slovak republics -- resurrect the name Czechoslovakia as a marketing tool, apparently since no one outside of the two countries seems capable of differentiating between the Czech Republic (previously branded abroad as the wince-inducing "Czechia") and Croatia or Chechnya. And pity the poor Slovaks. Major daily U.S. newspapers -- I'm looking at you, USA Today -- can't even tell the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia. It's a good thing, then, that the Croatian province of Slavonia isn't its own independent country, simply because that would introduce a further element of confusion.

OK, so really this just reveals that most people are stupid, or else intellectually lazy. (Sadly, I've encountered some highly educated people who lapse into use of Czechoslovakia, whether of ignorance or inertia.) But it seems that Paroubek is just as stupid, or lazy, for even suggesting this idea.

Of course, it is a bit of a conundrum. "Czech Republic" doesn't roll off the tongue any more gracefully than does "Czechia," and my adviser resents it as well for according special status to the Czechs when pretty much every other country, at least in Europe, has as its official name the "So-and-So Republic," e.g. the Slovak Republic, Hungarian Republic, Russian Republic, etc.

And that doesn't even get into the deeper, thornier issue of the term "Czech" being synonymous with both Bohemia and the country as a whole.