rantlust

Posted by anupcs on October 31st 2006 in India
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As some of you may know already, the city made famous by the tech boom in India, Bangalore, is going to have a new name: Bengaluru. The official announcement is due tomorrow though it will be some time before the government starts spending the large amount of money required to change the official stationery, road signs, organization names, etc. The airport three letter code (BLR) will remain the same.

Bengaluru is an approximation of the local name “Benda Kaal Ooru” (City of boiled beans!). The new name was first proposed by Kannada writer U R Ananthamurthy. Bangalore is just the latest city in India to revert to Indian-ized names. In the last ten years, Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, Pondicherry became Puducherri, Trivandrum became Thiruvananthapuram, and Calcutta became Kolkatta.

While it’s good to retain the “Indianness” in the names, I do think this is a huge waste of money and resources that should be better spent on say, solving the dog problem in Bangalore. Besides, you don’t have to “officially” change the name. Both the English and local names can co-exist like in many other places in the world.