A World Cup host city by any other name

One of the things the World Cup forces us to do every four years is to learn a little bit about the geography and the history of the host country. South Africa 2010 will be no exception. The World Cup organizing committee announced on Tuesday that three of the host cities will go by two names on official tournament documents and tickets.

Pretoria will now be known as Tshwane, the name of the municipal district containing South Africa’s capital, Bloemfontein becomes Manguang and Port Elizabeth will be called Nelson Mandela Bay.

So the roster of cities now looks like this:

Tshwane (Pretoria)
Manguang (Bloenfontein)
Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth)
Cape Town
Durban
Johannesburg
Rustenburg
Nelspruit
Polokwane

Map of the host cities

Memorize it now. There will be a quiz later…