Dual naming is the adoption of an official place name that combines two earlier names, or uses both names, often to resolve a disagreement over which of the two individual names is most appropriate. In some cases, the reasons are political. Sometimes the two individual names are from different languages; in some cases this is because the country has more than one official language, and in others, one language has displaced another. In several countries dual naming has only been applied recently, where a colonial settler community displaced the indigenous peoples and started using names in the settler language centuries ago, and efforts have now been made to use names in the indigenous language alongside the newer names, as an act of reconciliation.
Australia
In Australia, a dual naming policy is often now used officially to name landmarks that are of significance to local Indigenous Australians, but for which the most common name is European. For example, the landmark with the Pitjantjatjara name Uluru and English nameAyers Rock is now officially named Uluru / Ayers Rock. In the city of Adelaide, the Adelaide City Council began the process of dual naming all of the city squares, each of the parks making up the parklands which surround the Adelaide city centre and North Adelaide, and other sites of significance to the Kaurna people in 1997. The naming process, which assigned an extra name in the Kaurna language to each place, was mostly completed in 2003, and the renaming of 39 sites finalised and endorsed by the council in 2012.
"Derry/Londonderry" has been used unofficially to circumvent the Derry/Londonderry name dispute, in which Irish nationalists used "Derry" and Ulster unionists use "Londonderry" for the city and county in Northern Ireland. The "Derry stroke Londonderry" spoken form of this has in turn engendered the city's nickname "Stroke City".
In Romania, the city of Cluj was renamed Cluj-Napoca for political reasons in the 1970s, as the communist government wanted to emphasize the city's Roman origins.
The official names of bilingual areas of Alsace, France, and Switzerland also apply. For instance, the German and French Swiss town of Biel/Bienne is the combination of its German name and its French name.
Finland
In Finland, many towns have two names, one in Finnish and one in Swedish. The two names are considered equally correct but are not used as a formal duality of names.
A special problem occurs when the landmark lies on the border between two countries, for example Mount Everest has several different locally-used names.
