Voters in Rhode Island rejected a ballot measure to change the official name of the country's smallest state from the "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" to the shorter "State of Rhode Island." A mere 22 percent of voters supported the name change.
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This shows how incredibly conservative people can be about such name changes.
Well this does have the small virtue of favoring trivia contest composers with a deceptively simple but in reality extremely tough question: name all U.S. states (dropping introductory phrases in 4 cases of ‘Commonwealth Of’).
In Australia there are 6 states and 2 mainland territories. One, the Northern Territory, has a huge area but a tiny population — twice the size of Texas, with a quarter of the population of Rhode Island.
So there is a long-running but usually doomed movement to become a state. A few years ago the movement got a bit further advanced, and as part of that, the Territory government itself proposed a new name, should the effort succeed. And what did they come up with? “State of Northern Territory”!
Unbeleeeeevable!