ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how a young country which gained independence only recently struggles in widening its symbolic sovereignty, through the means of naming. It concentrates on the vernacular discourse rather than the official stance, since, as the reader will observe, these positions are divergent, if not opposing. The chapter begins with the history of naming of the Belarusian territories, proceeds to the methodology of this research and presents other examples of post-colonial countries debating on self-naming and the main arenas of the arguments over it. It also shows how the Russian factor and the authoritative official Belarusian discourse made the Belarusian naming case different from other countries' debates. The chapter aims to identify a certain discourse that exists within Belarusian society - the people who care about constructing a certain ethnic identity through analyzing the group sample.
