He renamed months of the year in honour of himself and his mother, and wrote a lifestyle guide, the Ruhnama, which became required reading for high school and university students.
Pattinson had a rather different experience with Skins than he did with ITV1 family drama Wild at Heart, which was remade for the CW Network in the US – renamed Life Is Wild – four years ago.
Arundhati Roy, the Booker prize-winning author, recently accused Mahatma Gandhi, India's revered independence leader, of discrimination and called for institutions bearing his name to be renamed because of his attitude to caste.
The Day of the Horse holiday was started by Berdymukhamedov's late predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, an eccentric dictator who renamed the months after members of his family and erected a golden statue of himself that revolved to reflect the sun.
After they renamed themselves IOU their break came when one member's mother brought them to the attention of Walsh, who was managing Boyzone, the Irish five-piece who signed to Polydor Records and conquered the charts after an A&R man at RCA passed up the chance to sign them.
He first appeared with the Union theatre repertory company (later renamed the Melbourne theatre company) in 1960 in She Stoops to Conquer.
It renamed itself the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), salvaged many of its assets (in ways that critics have called criminal) and emerged soon enough as a kind of regional protest party for the discontents of unification.
Niyazov ensured that gas-rich Turkmenistan remained one of the most isolated countries in the world, ensuring no free media, allowing little foreign travel and enacting a series of decrees that renamed the days of the week and months of the year after himself and members of his family.
The chateau at Saint-Maurice de Reméns, central to his idyllic recollections of childhood, will become the seat of an international foundation to complement another institute in Paris and a rash of renamed avenues, schools and public buildings.
A crowd in excess of 25,000 – the majority from Kilmarnock – turned out for a game that epitomised the spirit of what has been renamed the Scottish Communities League Cup.
Public health experts are demanding that electronic cigarettes be renamed in a bid to reverse their fast-growing appeal to young people.
