Bangalore or Bengaluru (Bengalūru)?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/02/02 10:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/02/02/7383730.aspx

It might remind you a bit of the whole Uighur/Uyghur issue (ref: here), but it is not really quite that.

Maybe it is a bit closer to the Farsi/Persian thing (ref here and here).

You see, for one this is not about a language's preferred name in English, it is about a region.

And for another, there does not seem to be quite the government sponsored push to change things. at all costs with real attempts to change what everyone else is doing.

Perhaps, now that I am so far into contrasting the issue, it may be an opportune time to take a moment, back up, and describe it, huh? :-)

The name is part-way through being converted to Bengaluru, which as honest transliterations go is much closer to the original name in Kannada (ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು, aka BA E ANUSVARA GA LLA UU RA U).

Now what is funny is that the government in Karnataka accept the name change idea an although it is not yet decided in terms of timeline, lots of places (like the airport, a lot of the Jet Airways printed material, the ITC Windsor hotel, and other places, have moved to the new name even before it becomes an official request.

Of course one can never be sure what the timeline will be when/if that pronouncement happens, so to be honest it looks like these companies are just figuring to avoid the rush?

Microsoft's various presences in Bangalore have not renamed themselves, but no company really has to do so (yet). I can't help but wonder what the perception is of those who do make the change. What do people in Bangalore think about the name change, the companies that are doing it now, and the companies that are waiting.

I suppose we're lucky there are no city lists in the NLS data; I'd hate to be in that discussion....

I think the govt will change that and will announce in major newspapers in a small size box!

Indian [city|street|...] names keep changing. Some examples are at http://blogs.msdn.com/abhinaba/archive/2006/12/29/names-of-indian-cities.aspx.

The important issue to remember is that the change is due to cultural/social pressure. Most name change happens by replacing old British Government imposed named by some Indian name. So its *good* to appear to be adopting the nationalized names faster. This is what makes Companies and other organization to be over zealous. Sometimes the name changes are plain funny like replacing Shakespeare Road by Theatre Sarani.

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