I often see the AI change the names of their Empires over a course of a game but I don't see a change in their ethics[1]. Like from "Interstellar Zaxxoid Alliance" to "Polity of Oxx-Oxx". That begs the question, why and how often do these name change?
[1] Usually, you would get an event pop-up when that happens.
Best Answer
You don't give a lot of information to work with, but I'll enumerate the possibilities I've seen so far:
An empire splits due to Rebellion (generally a single planet) or Liberation (generally a handful of planets). The new state gets a new name, often similar to the parent state's.
In either case the parent state still suffers from the same internal/external pressures that created the original split, and may not survive long.