It'd be cheaper to change the state constitution than change this German city's name

Oldenburg (Oldb) can’t remember how exactly it got its peculiar name

If you arrive at the Oldenburg (Oldb) train station, you may find it a bit odd that this German city needed to abbreviate its own name in brackets. You may decide it’s because they wanted to save space on the signboard or something before shrugging and moving on with your day.

It turns out, however, that this is precisely how the city has been known for decades and decades – since 1946. The bracketed abbreviation has been used in official municipal documents and signs since then, although no one is exactly sure why this precise abbreviated spelling was picked. Not even historians pondering in archives could reveal the reason.

This peculiar spelling, however, is now putting the city of 172,000 people in some legal predicament since the state where it’s located – Lower Saxony – has written down its name as Oldenburg (Oldenburg) in the state’s Municipal Constitution Act of 2011. And the state supervisory authority is therefore demanding an adjustment to the spelling to correct that.

What’s the history behind the bracketed name?

Although it may be unclear why the municipality decided to use the (Oldb) abbreviation in brackets, it is well-established why the appendix name was needed. The reason is so that Oldenburg of Lower Saxony would not be confused with another German city – Oldenburg in Holstein, a much smaller town located in Schleswig-Holstein.

The problem with adjusting the name to Oldenburg (Oldenburg), as silly as that may sound, is that it would cost a lot of money. Think about changing all the signs and documents and whatnot.

So, the city councillors decided to appeal to the state authorities to change the spelling of the city’s name in the constitutional law instead as this would be less of a headache.

Fortunately, the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior had previously announced that it was open to an application for a name change and agreed that the cost of doing this at the municipal level would be quite burdensome for the city.