Some countries give their provinces, states, and territories really boring, unoriginal names. Canada has the Northwest Territories. Australia has the state of Western Australia (guess where it's located) and Northern Territory. Pakistan has its Northwest Frontier Province.
The government of the Northwest Frontier Province, however, is ready for a name change. It conducted a survey to identify a new name for the province, and the most popular alternative name was … drumroll, please … "Afghania." (The province borders Afghanistan, surprise, surprise.)
Of course, Pashtun nationalists aren't too happy with the proposed new name. They want the Northwest Frontier Province, which has had that name since the days of British colonialism, to be called "Pakhtunkhwa," after, well, themselves. It makes a bit of sense since Pakistan's three other provinces are named after ethnic groups: Punjab for Punjabis, Sindh for Sindhis, and Baluchistan for Baluchis. [See correction below. -Ed.]
Either new name, though, could bring its own new problems. Pakistan's central government fears that "Pakhtunkhwa" could rekindle conflicts with Afghanistan over the Pashtun territory that lies along their shared border, a border that Afghanistan has never recognized. Meanwhile, "Afghania" doesn't sound much more original that the province's current appellation.
CORRECTION: As a couple of astute readers have informed me, Punjabis and Sindhis are named after Punjab and Sindh, and not the other way around, as the original post states. The Reuters article to which this post links does not make this distinction clear, however.
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