The name Czechia was adopted as the country’s official, international short-form name in 2016, on the instigation of President Milos Zeman. Photo credit: Freepik.
Prague, Nov 1 (CTK) – The Czech Republic will from now on present itself as “Czechia” for the purposes of international sports, according to a decision by the executive committee of the Czech Olympic Committee (COV) yesterday.
The COV will ask the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to replace the official name Czech Republic with Czechia in the international sport database.
In April, representatives of various Czech sports associations approved the use of the shorter name. The name Czechia has already been used in basketball, football and ice hockey.
COV deputy chairman Roman Kumpost said the vast majority of Olympic sports supported the change. He said the COV is following in the steps of the Foreign Ministry, which replaced the name Czech Republic with Czechia in the United Nations and NATO. A number of other organisations have since also accepted the new name, and it is also logical in sport, he added.
Kumpost said the change of the official name in the international database is a formal procedure that should be complete within a few weeks.
The name Czechia was adopted as the country’s official, international short-form name in 2016, on the instigation of President Milos Zeman. It has since been adopted by international bodies and global tech companies such as Google and Apple, but remains uncommon in spoken English.
