This thesis examines national name changes in terms of democratic and participatory rights. The research is divided into two sections; one compiles the information on several historic and contemporary name changes and analyses the common traits, the other investigates the eSwatini name change through case study interviews. The thesis is theory building on national name changes and settles on a conclusion on name changes being reasoned by either pragmatic sentiments or in terms of collective identity and that the processes of such name changes can be either democratic, organic, or undemocratic.