WORLD : You Can Call It Czech or You Can Call It Slovak and Be Right
PRAGUE — Czechoslovakia’s Parliament changed the country’s official name for the second time in three weeks today.
The country will now be known as The Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, a compromise designed to end months of argument between Czechoslovakia’s two constituent parts.
A debate began early this year to find a name more appropriate in the post-Communist era than the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It degenerated into “The Great Hyphen Debate” as Slovaks insisted their national identity could be properly reflected only in a name that formally divided them from Bohemians and Moravians.
Weary deputies voted March 29 for two versions of a new name. Czechoslovakia would be called The Czechoslovak Federative Republic in the Czech lands and The Czecho-Slovak Federative Republic in Slovakia.
Slovak nationalists were still not satisfied, and thousands demonstrated in the regional capital Bratislava. Slovak parliamentarians have accepted the new version.
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