Nauru Parliament Passes Unopposed Proposal to Rename Itself Naoero
Nauru’s parliament has passed an unopposed proposal to rename the country Naoero, moving the 13,000-person island one step closer to a change its government says would better reflect its own language and identity. The proposal still needs to go to a referendum before the name change can take effect.
President David Adeang told parliament in January that the switch would more faithfully honour the nation's heritage, language, and identity. The government says Naoero is the term Nauruans use in their own language, while Nauru became the official name because the Indigenous name could not be properly pronounced by foreign tongues.
David Adeang and Naoero
Adeang’s argument is straightforward: the country should use the name its own people already use. The government also said the name was changed not by our choice, but for convenience, a line that places the proposal squarely inside the island’s wider effort to restore Indigenous naming after colonial rule.
Nauru is the world’s smallest republic, about 21 sq km in size and roughly 3,000km north-east of Australia. It was christened Pleasant Island in 1798 when it was sighted by a British seafarer, annexed by Germany in 1888, and brought under Australia’s primary administration in 1919 under a League of Nations mandate. The spelling Nauru persisted after independence in 1968.
Colonial Names in Nauru
The government’s case is also tied to a broader pattern seen elsewhere. It pointed to Türkiye, formerly Turkey, Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, and Chuuk, which until 1990 was widely known as Truk, as examples of countries and places that changed official names. Zoltán Grossman, professor of geography and Native American studies at Evergreen State College, said: "Changing placenames has been an integral part of colonialism to erase the presence of the original peoples".
Jordan Engel, founder of the Decolonial Atlas, said: "At its core, decolonisation is about self-determination, and one of the most basic expressions of self-determination is being able to speak your language and use your ancestral placenames". For Nauru, the practical step now is the referendum: parliament has done its part, but voters still have to decide whether Naoero becomes the country’s official name.
Referendum Vote Ahead
The size of the country makes the vote unusually intimate. With about 13,000 people on an island of 21 sq km, the outcome will be felt in schools, offices, passports, and state documents if voters approve the change. The government’s next step is to put the proposal to the public and seek the formal mandate that parliament alone cannot supply.
