Gorzow WielkopolskiLocal authorities in the western city of Gorzow Wielkopolski have launched a campaign to change the name of the settlement.
The bone of contention is the Wielkopolski suffix, which mistakenly suggests that the city belongs to Wielopolska, the ‘Greater Poland’ region.
The city is in fact the largest city in the Lubusz province.
“The word ‘Wielkopolski’ is completely needless in the Gorzow name,” exclaimed Jerzy Synowiec, a local councillor for the ruling Civic Platform party, in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita newspaper.
“There are no geographical or historical considerations for using it,” he argues.
Prior to the war, the city belonged to Germany, and was known as Landsberg an der Warthe. However, following the redrawing of borders in 1945, it was renamed, and became capital of a new province named Gorzow Wielkopolski. This was entirely separate from the Wielkopolski region.
In 1999, the Gorzow Wielkopolski and Zielona Gora regions were merged into today’s Lubusz province.
“The change of the name could help in strengthening local patriotism,” says city representative Anna Zalewska, noting that the majority of the inhabitants were resettled in Gorzow from Poland’s lost borderlands in the east.
However, a 2000 plebiscite revealed that most of the residents were reluctant about changing the city’s name.
Nevertheless, the bid is nothing extraordinary in Poland. According to statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, some 500 settlements have changed their identity in the last three years. These are largely villages, but not only.
Last week it emerged that authorities in the city of Stargard Sczecinski in Western Pomerania were reconsidering the potentially misleading affiliation with the port of Szczecin, many miles away.
“We don’t have any complexes, we are fighting for our identity,” said Jan Zenkner, head of the Friends of Stargard Society, who believes that the city’s name spreads disinformation. (nh/jb)