Names are much more than convenient labels. They carry histories, establish relationships, express belonging, and sometimes perpetuate inequalities. Changing a name can therefore be an act of liberation, an assertion of identity, a political statement, or an attempt to reconsider the past.
These questions lie at the heart of “Renaming – People, Things, Places” (Neubenennen – Menschen, Dinge, Orte), an exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, running from 4 September 2026 until autumn 2027.
The exhibition invites visitors to reconsider one of the most fundamental human practices: naming.
A Museum That Questions Its Own Name
What makes this exhibition particularly intriguing is that the museum itself is undergoing a process of renaming.
In 2026, the institution initiated a participatory discussion about replacing its German name, Völkerkundemuseum. The term belongs to a historical tradition of ethnographic classification whose assumptions and terminology are increasingly being reconsidered.
Rather than treating the change as a simple exercise in institutional rebranding, the museum has turned its own transformation into an opportunity for public reflection.
Who has the authority to assign names? Whose perspectives do established names represent? And who should participate when an institution decides to redefine its identity?
The exhibition thus becomes both an investigation of naming practices and a practical experiment in renegotiating them.
People, Things, and Places: Three Dimensions of Renaming
Drawing on objects from the museum's collections, contemporary artistic contributions, and community perspectives, the exhibition examines renaming across different cultural and social contexts.
Personal names can signal changing identities, social transitions, migration experiences, and individual self-determination. A new name may express belonging to a community or distance from an inherited identity.
Names of objects raise another set of questions. Museum collections frequently preserve labels assigned by collectors, administrators, or researchers rather than by the communities that created and used the objects. Some historical descriptions reflect colonial classifications, outdated terminology, or incomplete cultural knowledge. Revisiting these names can reveal how institutions construct and transmit knowledge.
Place-names, meanwhile, are closely connected to political authority, historical memory, and territorial identity. Renaming a street, city, or country can commemorate independence, challenge inherited power structures, or express a changing understanding of the past.
One example highlighted by the museum involves a basket from Zimbabwe, used to illustrate how renaming in the context of African decolonisation became associated with national identity and self-determination.
The exhibition also draws on experiences of renaming in migration contexts, Deaf communities, trans communities, scouting, civil-status changes, and Zurich's urban environment.
Together, these examples demonstrate that renaming is neither a uniquely modern phenomenon nor merely a linguistic operation. It is an ongoing social process with cultural, emotional, and political consequences.
Why This Exhibition Matters for Onomastics
For researchers of proper names, the Zurich exhibition offers an important interdisciplinary perspective.
Traditional onomastic research has often focused on etymology, historical development, geographical distribution, and the classification of names. The study of renaming introduces an additional dimension: the social negotiation of the relationship between a name and its referent.
A name may remain linguistically stable while its social meaning changes dramatically. Conversely, a newly introduced name may not immediately replace an older one. Official, historical, vernacular, and contested names frequently coexist.
The resulting questions are central to socio-onomastics and critical toponymy. Who determines which name is legitimate? What happens when a community rejects an externally imposed name? How do alternative names preserve memories that official naming practices overlook?
The exhibition also draws attention to an important distinction: changing a name does not necessarily resolve the historical inequalities associated with it. The process matters as much as the resulting name.
From an onomastic perspective, the museum's participatory approach is particularly significant because it places naming authority itself under examination.
From Exhibition to Collaborative Research
The project extends beyond the exhibition rooms.
A related citizen-science initiative, “Naming Together”, runs from October 2026 to October 2027. Led by Professor Alice Hertzog, it brings museum specialists, researchers, artists, community partners, and members of the public together to reconsider how objects in ethnographic collections are named and described.
The initiative combines ethnographic investigation, digital humanities, and artistic research. Its objective is not simply to replace individual labels, but to explore more collaborative ways of producing and organising knowledge.
Another complementary project, “Box by Box”, examines the museum's collection of 61,889 objects through an interactive visualisation. Among its concerns is the question of whose names were preserved in museum records and whose names disappeared.
For onomasticians, these initiatives illustrate how naming research can contribute to contemporary debates about cultural heritage, documentation, metadata, and representation.
An Invitation to Rethink Names
Developed in collaboration with social anthropology students at the University of Zurich and other partners, the exhibition includes interactive elements that encourage visitors to examine their own assumptions about names.
A programme of guided tours, discussions, workshops, and films further explores the relationship between names and identities. The accompanying film series, “Names in Motion”, runs from September 2026 to June 2027.
Ultimately, Renaming – People, Things, Places offers a reminder that names are never entirely neutral. They reflect the people who create them, the institutions that recognise them, and the communities that use, contest, or transform them.
For anyone interested in onomastics, anthropology, cultural heritage, or the politics of language, the Zurich exhibition provides an opportunity to explore a deceptively simple question:
When we change a name, are we merely changing a word — or are we changing the way we understand the world?
Exhibition Information
Exhibition: Renaming – People, Things, Places
Dates: 4 September 2026 – Autumn 2027
Venue: Ethnographic Museum, University of Zurich
Address: Pelikanstrasse 40, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland
Curators: Alice Hertzog and Martina Wernsdörfer
Admission: Free
Opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday 10:00–17:00; Thursday 10:00–19:00; Saturday 14:00–17:00; Sunday 11:00–17:00. Closed Mondays.
Official exhibition page: https://www.musethno.uzh.ch/en/Exhibitions/Renaming.html
Related research project: https://www.musethno.uzh.ch/en/research/research-projects/naming-together.html
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