The former name of Zimbabwe, a country in Southern Africa, named after British colonizer Cecil Rhodes in the late 19th century.
Named after Cecil Rhodes, the British-South African businessman and politician who founded the British South Africa Company. The name was applied to the territory in the 1890s and persisted until 1980 when the country gained independence and renamed itself Zimbabwe.
Rhodesia is a perfect example of how place names encode colonial history—it's literally named after one man, which is why when Zimbabwe gained independence, the very first thing they did was reclaim their country's identity with an African name! The name change itself was a political statement.
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