How do you group your coins ?

I ask because i'm torn. I have my first album and all my coins are in 2x2 lighthouse flips and they are now in 3-ring pages. I've categorised them in continents, but I am going alphabetical with the  countries. Now my question is.. What should I do when I have countries which have changed their names ? As I have 4 coins in main question there is one which says united colonies of demerary and Essequibo and the other is Essequibo and demerary, then I have one for British guiana, another for Guiana and west indies and I'm gunna be getting Guyana ones too as I also collect commonwealth, now what do I do ? Alphabetical by the latest name it's known by ? First name it was known by ? I think the best route is too pick one of those and keep 'em all together but I would like the advice of my betters

Do you have an extremely large book case ? If you do you could just have an album for each country and section the albums into the different names for countries that have change their names.

I group my coins by the modern country that continues an older one or one that has changed its name.

For any country which is no longer existing independently, or has a different name, I establish its original geographical boundaries.
- If a country is roughly continued in another modern state, it's obvious (e.g. Soviet Union is stored under Russia).
- If a country merged with others into another country, I list it under that country (e.g. German States or GDR under Germany).
- If a country got split up, I list it under the country which now possesses the original capital of the split up one (e.g. Yugoslavia under Serbia).

This usually works out fine, but sometimes you have to make an arbitrary choice (Straits Settlements under Malaysia). Sometimes it leads me to disagree with our other numismatic sources (Gebiet des Oberbefehlhabers Ost under Lithuania).

This does make your collection dynamic, however. Recently I had to regroup Curaçao and the Netherlands Antilles after the demise of the latter as an independent entity.

I see your dilemma, BUT I think you over complicate the issue. As you have announced, you are collecting commonwealth coins. You can then use additional sheets to separate out the flips with clear labels explaining when the country changed their name.
radrick007 (hope you don't mind me using your name as an example) has demonstrated some of his labelling strategies in some posts, which show a lot of hard work.
I think you could do something similar or if you are going for the alphabetical thing...expect that when you flip through the folder you'll have Demerary and Esquibo and then vice versa.

I think I'll go with what radrick has done and as you say label it out there's nothing spoiling with going into a few albums as my collection grows I will separate it into separate continents, it's also with the east Africa protectorate coins and the east Africa Uganda or west Africa nigeria and fed of Nigeria it's a minefield ha ! Maybe having areas within the continents separated could work then I can have east Africa and keep Ugandan coins there too. this is all really good info !

By country and value.

Thanks for the mention, bam777, I don't mind at all. This is one of the pictures I have posted before:

Apart from the large album front right, I get all my albums, leaves and holders from Prinz Publications online. The albums and slipcases are their economy range (Vera Trinder) and I use Barrington Classic 3-pocket leaves for my banknote album and 20- and 30-pocket leaves for my coins. The big blue album at the front contains my specialist countries, namely mainland UK (not including Channel Islands, Isle of Man, etc.) and South Africa. The coins in this album are all in Hartberger non-adhesive 2x2 holders and the UK coins are grouped by Monarch from Victoria to Elizabeth II - this is my favourite page of George V silver:

I am still building my South Africa collection but at the moment it is in 2 sections: ZAR and Union sterling issues followed by RSA decimal (Rand) issues. Like I said, I am still putting it together so I don't have any pictures to show you yet.
The albums standing at the back in the top image are my "Rest of the World" collection grouped alphabetically by country. For example, Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic follow each other alphabetically but Slovakia is in one of the other albums under 'S'. I think bam777 is right about overcomplicating the issue by grouping geographically or by former political boundaries, etc. I mean, it is hard enough just collecting and cataloguing our collections without having to carry out historical research every time we add a new country

Wow ! For now I've decided to go continentally and grouping under the modern names I'm
Gunna do something similar with a divider with fact files on the nations like my African ones like east Africa then all the indispensably nations which arose from it, seems to be working fine for now, what with australasia and oceana I always thought that was pretty much the same thing ha !

I divide mine into these areas with pages and dividers for 2x2 flips in a three ring binder:

United Kingdom
Africa
Europe
Asia
Oceania and Pacific
Americas
and my specialist collection Fiji

Within those sections I divide them up into countries alphabetically.

My coins are organized by Gregorian date.

Thanks for all the hints and tips guys. It's very interesting how they are all different - I suppose it depends on your OCD levels ha ! Me personally, I'm a bit of a slob; not too bad though, but when it comes to organising my coins I need them to be perfect. I haven't got enough commonwealth coins yet to do it the way I want, but I will soon hopefully be able to section off each country