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The story
A 5ch thread listing things whose names have changed over the years — like “jeans are now ‘denim’” and “Georgia used to be ‘Gruzia’” — blew up with replies. Topics ranged from official renamings of countries and dog breeds to barely-alive slang for toothpaste and bell-bottoms, and partway through, posters started objecting that “some of these aren’t renamings — they’re just different things.” Plenty of people were also surprised to learn that the mnemonic for founding the Kamakura shogunate had changed from “Nice Kingdom (1192)” to “Nice Box (1185).”
What people said
Rewind ⇒ Fast-reverse (as media moved from tape to DVD/streaming)
Jeans (jiipan) ⇒ Denim / jeans
Kiev → Kyiv
Shiba-ken, Akita-ken → Shiba-inu, Akita-inu (old vs. new reading of "dog" in the breed names)
🐹＜Still at it, huh
Ground (jimen) was also written 'dimen' (地面/ぢめん)
The voiced form of 'chi' (ち) is technically 'di' (ぢ), but so many idiots kept misspelling it 'ji' (じ) that 'ji' got officially allowed too.
In other words, it's the bottom of society running the world.
The 'ji' in 'jimen' (ground, 地) isn't a voiced version of 'chi' (ち) at all — it was always its own separate reading, 'ji' (じ). Same deal as in 'nunoji' (fabric), 'kiji' (dough/cloth), and 'jihada' (bare skin).
It's less that the names changed and more that some of these are just different things entirely.
Waishatto ('white shirt') → Y-shirt (shortened after 'white' got misheard as 'Y')
That's not a renaming, that's just everything being completely different
→ 'nerihamigaki' (toothpaste paste)
Choco-mint
Kind of like 'spaghetti' vs. 'pasta'?
What's that theory actually based on?
Not clear how you'd even prove something like that
Then again, isn't 'kyonyuu' old-fashioned too by now?
Background and talking points
Each change raised in the thread has its own backstory. “Gruzia → Georgia” reflects a 2015 change by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made to move away from the Russian-derived name. “Kiev → Kyiv” followed Russia’s 2022 invasion, as major media switched to honor the Ukrainian pronunciation. “Nice Kingdom → Nice Box” stems from textbooks adopting the theory that the Kamakura shogunate’s founding should be dated to 1185, when real control was established, rather than 1192, when the shogun was formally appointed — the year itself didn’t change, just which year counts as the founding. Some replies argued these aren’t cases of “the name changing” so much as “one thing being swapped for an entirely different thing” (>>11), and the same objection came up around brake discs vs. disc rotors, where a difference in part terminology was being treated as a mere renaming. The ji/di spelling rule comes from modern kana usage conventions, and other replies pushed back on the accuracy of the popular theory behind it.
※This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread「Wow, there really are a lot of things whose names changed between then and now」.
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