How To Spell Colombia The Country? Colombians Tired Of 'Columbia' Misspelling

What's in a name? Ask Colombians and they'll tell you that there's a lot in the spelling.

The country Colombia is commonly and recurrently misspelled as "Columbia," and Colombians are over it. The Wall Street Journal reports that a social media campaign has been created, and the movement is appropriately called "It's Colombia, NOT Columbia." The campaign focuses on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to detect the spelling mistake and correct the culprit with the hashtag "#itscolombianotcolumbia."

The mistake of misspelling Colombia has been made by corporations, celebrities, and politicians alike. In the past year alone, offenders of the misspelling include, but are not limited to: Virgin Mofile, P.F. Chang's, Lufthansa, Justin Bieber, Ozzy Osbourne, and Paris Hilton. Arguably the most notorious incident was in 1973, when the Nixon administration gave the Andean nation a lunar rock from the Apollo 17 landing on the moon, accompanied with a metal plaque reading: "Presented to the People of the Republic of Columbia. Richard M. Nixon."

The social media campaign was created last year by public relations firm Zemoga and Compass Porter Novelli for Social Media Week in Bogotá. When Carlos Pardo, the Vice President of Operations for Zemoga, was asked to attend Social Media Week in New York to talk about social media in Colombia, he and his team created the campaign to prove that "social networks are the best platform for spreading a message and the new image of Colombia."

As for why the misspelling is a big deal, Pardo explained in an interview last year about the significance of the correct spelling.

"More than it being a bother, it’s the fact that a name is a very important part of someone’s identity," said Pardo to The Huffington Post. "If my name is Carlos and they call me something different repeatedly, I’m going to feel bad. We just want people to call us by our name, but the issue goes beyond the name, we want people to be interested in the positive things that are happening here."

Colombia and Columbia essentially mean the same thing--"Land of Columbus"--and pay homage to explorer Christopher Columbus. "D.W. Cummings, author of the reference book "American English Spelling," says the name Columbus is derived from the Latin word for dove, Columba," writes the Wall Street Journal. "But since Columbus's name in Spanish used an o after the l, it was probably decided to keep the name of the Spanish-speaking country with an o."

History aside, Colombians just want one thing: Spell the name of their country correctly. "We're not trying to insult the people or companies that make this mistake," said Pardo to the Wall Street Journal. "We don't say 'Hey, idiot, fix it!' We just say 'Dear so-and-so, it's Colombia, not Columbia.'"