Oct 13, 2026 13:08 pm IST

'Say Our Name': Why A Tiny Island Nation Wants The World To Get Its Name Right

Standing before the UN hall of nations, Naoero President David Adeang asked the world to unlearn its comfortable habits and speak a restored truth.

Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist

Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist

When President David Adeang stepped up to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly, his presence was a quiet rebellion wrapped in an international protocol-sheet. Representing an eight-square-mile dot in the vast expanse of the South Pacific, he spoke not of geopolitical grievances or rising ocean tides, but of something far more fundamental to human dignity: a nation's right to its own name.

For decades, the global community had comfortably referred to his home as Nauru - a clipped, anglicised approximation that was easy on western tongues but ultimately estranged from its native roots. Standing before the hall of nations, Adeang asked the world to unlearn its comfortable habits and speak a restored truth. The island was reclaiming its ancestral name and pronunciation, returning to Naoero, pronounced "na-oh-airo". With three simple words - "Say our name" - he captured the ancient, persistent human longing to be called by the sound we choose for ourselves, rather than the labels thrust upon us by observers, cartographers, and conquerors.

Names are the first architecture of identity. Before we possess property, ideology, or social standing, we are given a name, and in that collection of syllables resides a universe of intent. To name a thing is to claim a relationship with it, and to name oneself is the ultimate act of self-determination. When an individual insists on a specific name, a particular spelling, or an authentic pronunciation, it is rarely a matter of mere chauvinism or pedantry. It is an insistence on being perceived accurately, on bridging the gap between who we are inside and how we are registered by the world outside. When we mispronounce someone's name, even inadvertently, we perform a tiny act of erasure, signalling that our ease of speech matters more than their history. It is hardly surprising then that human beings guard their names with fierce........

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