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Swaziland

Also known as Kingdom of Swaziland

Lasted

about 50 years

1968  →  19 April 2018

Cause of death
Killed by one executive
Made by
King Mswati III

King Mswati III declared at his fiftieth-birthday celebrations that the country would revert to its precolonial name.

Swaziland spent fifty years as an independent country carrying a name that was half Swazi and half English, and that its king said caused confusion abroad. On 19 April 2018, in a stadium in Manzini marking both the fiftieth anniversary of independence and his own fiftieth birthday, Mswati III declared the Kingdom of Swaziland to be the Kingdom of Eswatini. He had been quietly using the new name at the UN since 2017.

Standing in the archive

Rank 35 of 127 by lifespan. Swaziland outlasted 73% of everything else on file.

Cite this entry

"Swaziland." How Long It Lasted, https://www.howlongitlasted.com/thing/swaziland.

Died nearby

Sources

Last checked by a human on 24 July 2026