Apparently some dead bloke once said: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." But six months after the Czech Republic officially changed its name to Czechia, the 10 million people living in that country still appear to want to stick with the old name.
The country's leaders chose Czechia as the alternative name because it is supposedly easier for companies, politicians and sportsmen to use on products, name tags and sporting jerseys.
However, on a visit to its capital, Prague, Guardian journalist Robert Tait found that the majority of ordinary people prefer the old name.
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"It's a little confusing. Nobody calls it Czechia, I don't know why," said Lukas Hasik, 40, a software engineer hurrying through Wenceslas Square. "People are used to the name Czech Republic by now and I would say we should stick with it."
"It's the Czech Republic," agreed Zdenek Cech, 30, a medical student at Charles University in Prague. "I would like a shorter name but Czechia doesn't sound nice. It sounds too small, or like some dialect."
Czech authorities continue to use the term Czech Republic on official correspondence and English-language websites, and generally Czechia appears to not be catching on.
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Eliska Cmejrkova, a Czech language teacher, said that calling the country Czechia could be justified historically but would be unlikely to stick.
"Czechia makes some sense historically but the common people will call it the Czech Republic," she said. "You cannot change a language by law; it's like a living organism. Only linguists and nationalists care about this. When I talk about Czechia with my friends, we make fun of it and never use it."
Along with Slovakia, the Czech Republic was established when Czechoslovakia split in two in 1993.
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