Name mutilation

Like Bangalore supposedly became Bengaluru a few years back (when HDK was cheap minister), West Bengal is going to change its name to “Poschim Bongo” or some such thing. Now, unlike Bombay-Mumbai or Madras-Chennai, the thing with these name changes is that they are merely globalization of local names. Let me explain.

Bombay (bom bahia or good port in Portuguese) and Mumbai (of Mumba Devi) are fundamentally different. Madras (mad race? ) and Chennai (beautiful) are again fundamentally different. While I disagree with those name changes and still prefer to call those cities by their former names, I see that the change in those names at least has some merit. They wanted to get rid of their colonial British-given names (and i’m sure Tams wanted to prove they aren’t a mad race, though they might have achieved the opposite through this action) and chose local names in the local language.

When Bangalore’s name was supposedly changed to “Bengaluru” a few years back, Kannada newspapers (I used to subscribe to Vijaya Karnataka back then) had a tough time explaining the name change. Because Bangalore has forever been known as “Bengaluru” in Kannada. Even now, when I speak in Kannada I say “Bengaluru” but I say “Bangalore” when speaking in any other language. While it might have been a noble intention by HDK and UR Ananthamurthy and others behind the name change to get the non-Kannadigas to use the Kannada name, the effect has been completely counterproductive.

Till date, I’m yet to meet someone who is not conversant in Kannada to pronounce “BengaLuru” correctly. First of all, most people can’t say the “L” sound and instead pronounce it as “l” (in Kannada that can make a profound difference. for example “hELu” is “tell” while “hElu” is “shit” ). Next (this is the problem with most North Indians), people have trouble pronouncing the short ‘e’ sound. Finally, it’s hard for people to figure out that the first U in Bengaluru is to be pronounced long and the terminal u should be pronounced short. The combination of all these means horribly messed up pronunciation, which makes one wonder why they bothered to “change” the name at all.

West Bengal doesn’t seem to have learnt from this experience of Bangalore. They want to call themselves “Poschim Bongo” it seems. Not being a bong, I’m going to have major difficulty in pronouncing that name, and I might end up pronouncing it in a way that makes most bongs cringe. I really hope they see sense before they make this name change official and opt for a saner name, if they want to change their name at all that is.

One thing they could try would be to knock that “west” off their name (I believe the Times of India has been campaigning for this). West Bengal was the primary reason that I got my directions and geography horribly wrong till I was some eight years old. I used to assume that “West Bengal” was at the western edge of India! Especially since Bangladesh is no more called “East Bengal”.

Given that they are mostly commie, one thing they could try is probably to go the East Germany or North Korea way, and name themselves “Democratic State of Bengal” or some such thing.

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