Uasin Gishu County Governor Jonathan Bii has called for the county to be renamed Eldoret County, in order to avoid confusing foreigners and tourists.
While welcoming delegates at the Kenya Software and AI Summit in Eldoret City, the governor said that it was difficult to market the county because of the difference between its headquarters' name, Eldoret, and the county's name, Uasin Gishu.
He recounted a recent incident in China where people were unable to pronounce the name 'Uasin Gishu' and struggled to differentiate between the city of Eldoret and the county.
He therefore called for a name change to bring it in line with other cities, such as Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru, whose county and city names are the same.
"I also just want to make a request from this summit to AI, how can you market our county. Can you apply AI to market Uasin Gishu, because I was in China a few weeks ago, and they do not know the difference between Uasin Gishu and Eldoret," he narrated.
"They say Eldoret County and Uasin Gishu County. They also do not know how to pronounce Uasin Gishu, so I think we need to go like the rest of the cities that go with the name of the county, like Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru."
Governor Bii's request comes just over a year after President William Ruto conferred city status to Eldoret on August 15, 2024, making it Kenya's fifth city.
Eldoret is the only one of the five Kenyan cities whose name does not coincide with its county, something that the governor has noted is highly confusing.
In its report in 2023, the Senate Committee on Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations stated that Eldoret met all the necessary requirements to become a city as outlined in Section 5 and the First Schedule of the Urban Areas and Cities Act, 2011.
As the headquarters of Uasin Gishu County, Eldoret, which is also home to President Ruto, is the most popular urban dwelling in the county.
Other towns and urban dwellings in the county include Moi's Bridge, Matunda, Burnt Forest and Turbo. In May, Governor Bii announced plans to elevate six new urban areas to municipalities, which would formalise their status and allow for increased infrastructure development and urban services.
The county is named after the Maasai clan, the Illwuasin-kishu, who historically used the plateau as a grazing area.
The name 'Uasin Gishu' has been anglicised and officially adopted following the area's surrender to the colonial government under the Anglo-Maasai Agreement of 1911.
