Place names in Zimbabwe

Place names in Zimbabwe, including the name of the country itself, have been altered at various points in history. The name Zimbabwe was officially adopted concurrently with Britain's grant of independence in April 1980. Prior to that point, the country had been called Southern Rhodesia from 1898 to 1964 (or 1980, according to British law), Rhodesia from 1964 to 1979, and Zimbabwe Rhodesia between June and December 1979. Since Zimbabwean independence in 1980, the names of cities, towns, streets and other places have been changed by the government, most prominently in a burst of renaming in 1982.

The Zimbabwean government began renaming cities, towns, streets and other places in 1982, hoping to remove vestiges of British and Rhodesian rule. The capital city, Salisbury, was renamed Harare. Many other place names merely had their spellings altered to better reflect local pronunciation in Shona or Kalanga, as under white rule the spellings officially adopted often coincided with pronunciation in Sindebele. Most major cities and towns were renamed, but some places with an Ndebele majority—such as Bulawayo, the country's second city—were not. Some smaller towns retain their colonial-era names, such as Beitbridge, West Nicholson and Fort Rixon. Street names were changed wholesale, with British-style names, particularly those of colonial figures, being phased out in favour of those of black nationalist leaders, prominently Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo and Jason Moyo.

The name of the country has changed several times since it was originally demarcated in the late 19th century by Cecil Rhodes' British South Africa Company. The company initially referred to each territory it acquired by its respective name—Mashonaland, Matabeleland and so on—and collectively called its lands "Zambesia" (Rhodes' personal preference) or "Charterland" (Leander Starr Jameson's), but neither of these caught on. Most of the first settlers instead called their new home "Rhodesia", after Rhodes; this was common enough usage by 1891 to be used by journalists. In 1892, the Rhodesia Chronicle and Rhodesia Herald newspapers were first published, respectively at Tuli and Salisbury. The company officially applied the name Rhodesia in 1895. "It is not clear why the name should have been pronounced with the emphasis on the second rather than the first syllable," Robert Blake comments, "but this appears to have been the custom from the beginning and it never changed."

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