Tshwane means “We Are All the Same.”
Finally breaking with that apartheid heritage.
The City Center is still Pretoria, which is a nice compromise.
Hmm…that’s that place that was founded by Marthinus Pretorius, the son of Andreis Pretorius, wasn’t it? I wonder where its old name came from. The guy founded the place, the Boers settled it. Why shouldn’t it have a Boer name, and be named after the guy who created it?
I too think it will be a reasonable compromise, and I like it the more after learning what the new name means.
Does anyone know a link to a good synopsys of South African history? I’m curious how apartheid came to be, and whether there was any dichotomy between whites of Dutch vs. Anglo heritage, with regard to their views on race relations. The villains of apartheid, at least in the last years, seemed always to have Dutch names.
Hm, Wikipedia says something different:
There is a lot to South African history and it might take a while to go through this but it’s pretty fascinating stuff.
You might also want to read James A Michener’s the Covenant. A fictionalised version of South African history but based mostly in reality.
Hopefully,the rest of the world will carry on calling it Pretoria as always and we don’t get inflicted with this Mumbai/Kolkata/Beijing stuff…
I must admit, I’m always a bit confused by those who take this attitude. I mean, what does it matter to either of us if some city changes its name? If Egypt were to rename Cairo to Bumf**k tomorrow, I really wouldn’t care one way or the other.
OK, maybe I would care a little, but just for the comedic value. 
How do you pronounce Tshwane? Tsh-wah-neh? curious
Because (transliterations to your languange of choice aside) the people of a land have no right to chose what they’ll call the place where they live.
I’m only confused when there are valid reasons to call a place by its old name: ie Myanmar / Burma.
*scratches head…i’m slightly confused a)as to what you’re saying… and b)whether you’re agreeing or disagreeing with me
What bugs me is when PC journalists/politicians etc. demand that we now call Bombay Mumbai or Calcutta Kolkata for instance,otherwise we are ‘racist’ for keeping the ‘imperialistic’ names.And yet no-one ever refers to Praha,Wien,Kobenhavn or Munchen…
So you’re aware, and I hope this doesn’t take the wind of out your sails, but Beijing’s name never changed (well, its name has changed some times, but not recently.) The spelling of the name changed to better reflect the name.
Surely if you change the spelling you change the name?How many letters would you have to change for it to be a whole new name? 
Would you consider ‘Mumbai’ to be a new name or just a variant spelling?And if it’s just a variation spelling,why are folk so prickly about using the old variation?
Because Mumbai sounds nothing like Bombay, which is what the people call the city, and unlike Munich, the title was thrust upon them by imperialist invaders, not just outsiders with a different language.
The title wasn’t “thrust upon them by imperialist invaders”…Bombay (well, Bom Bahia) was the original name of the city. Mumbai is what the city was called by later Marathi immigrants, and the city was renamed when Shiv Sena came to power. But neither the Portugese, who named the island, the British, who built the city, or the Konkani, who were the original inhabitants of the region, ever called the city Mumbai.