RENAMING PLACES, REWRITING HISTORY – A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON

 

The vanquished never write the history of a place and what is worse their history too is erased from memory. The most potent way of doing so is by changing the name of the particular place so that it can no longer be associated with its history which may be unpleasant to its current victor. A recent example is Afghanistan. It became the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to please its current rulers, the Taliban.

Often we adjust to calling a city by its local name. Most will now say Mumbai instead of Bombay, or Beijing instead of Peking. But there are some cities which English-speakers stubbornly refuses to adjust to, calling them something that often bears little resemblance to the real name. Exonyms are names for a geographical place used only outside that place like Munich. Endonyms are names used by locals like München. Giving exonym is by no means a solely English-speaking trait, and this has happened all over Europe. The French call London "Londres'' and the Italians call it "Londra'' ! The English were confused with the Arabic scripts and often ended up anglicizing them so that they could pronounce them easily – thus they gave the exonyms Doha and Cairo.

Why are places renamed in India?

Besides the obvious reason to shed off the tag of colonialism there are many other reasons why cities and states are renamed. These are:

 

Standardization of spellings: Quilandy and Koyilandy are the same place but spelled differently. So are Canannore and Kannur, and so are Rangiya and Rangia. So, if we do not standardize spellings this may lead to confusion and even legal hassles.

Change in official English spelling: The British often named the cities to suit their pronunciation, but ignoring the local language and dialect. Thus Kolkata became Calcutta, Kanpur became Kawnpore, Vishakhapatnam became Waltair, Udhagamandalam became Otakamund or Ooty and Jabalpur became Jubbalpore. All these had to be reverted back to their original names once the British staged the first Brexit in 1947.

Renaming in local languages:  The States Reorganization Act of 1956, a major reform of the boundaries of India's states and territories, organized them along linguistic lines. At this time, for example, Travancore-Cochin was renamed Kerala. Later the reorganisation of Madhya Bharat into Madhya Pradesh in 1959, the renaming of the Madras State to Tamil Nadu in 1969, and of the Mysore State to Karnataka in 1973, and of Uttaranchal to Uttarakhand in 2007 took place.

Cities too have been renamed in local languages –  Alleppey, Calicut, Cannanore and Cochin were converted to their Malayalam names Allappuzha, Kozhikode, Kannur and Kochi respectively. Bangalore, Belgaum, Hubli, Mysore and Gulberga were converted to their Kannada names Bengaluru, Belagavi, Hubballi, Mysuru and Kalaburagi respectively. Bombay, Panjim and Poona were converted into their Marathi names Mumbai, Panaji and Pune and Indhur, Gurgaon and Allahabad adopted their Hindi names Indore, Gurugram and Prayagraj. Bombay became Mumbai to honour the city’s patron Goddess Mumbadevi.

Changing Muslim names: Just like the colonial hangover was shed by converting the English monikers the Hindus felt that the evidence of subjugation by Muslim rulers from the North-West needed urgent attention and several Muslim names of old cities were converted into Hindi names. Thus Allahabad became Prayagraj, Mugalsarai became Pandit Deen Dayal Uppadhayya Nagar and Faizabad to Ayodhya.

True many cities like Ahmedabad, Adilabad, Aurangabad and Ahmednagar have been renamed and go by the names give by their Muslim rulers but they too are a part of our history and heritage and renaming them may not be a good idea.

Changing with political ideology: When the party of the Backward community Bahujam Samaj Party was in power Noida became Gautam Buddha Nagar, Sambhal became Bhim Nagar, Kasganj was renamed Kanshiram Nagar  and Kanpur Dehat became Ramabai Nagar. Thus an attempt was made to glorify Dalit icons.

  

Renaming of States

The renaming of states and territories in India has also taken place, but until the 2010s with actual substantial name changes in both local language and in English such as the old British state name of Travancore-Cochin to Kerala (1956). The most notable exceptions are Indian English spelling-changes of Orissa to Odisha (March 2011) and the union territory of Pondicherry (which includes the city of Pondicherry) to Puducherry. The new state of Uttaranchal was renamed as Uttarakhand and its parent state Uttar Pradesh was previously known as Union Province.

A list of cities and states with their old and new names is available in the following table.

 

#	New Name	Old Name
1.	Chennai	Madras
2.	Kolkata	Calcutta
3.	Mumbai	Bombay
4.	Vadodara	Baroda
5.	Kozhikode	Calicut
6.	Kochi	Cochin
7.	Varanasi	Benares
8.	Thoothukudi	Tuticorin
9.	Kanya Kumari	Cape Comorin
10.	Kalaburagi	Gulbarga
11.	Belagavi	Belgaum
12.	Jamshedpur	Sakchi
13.	Gurugram	Gurgaon
14.	Palakkad	Palghat
15.	Dr. Ambedkar Nagar	Mhow
16.	Kollam	Quilon
17.	Aluva	Alwaye
18.	Prayagraj	Allahabad
#	Modern Name	Ancient Name
19.	Peshawar	Purushapura
20.	Patna	Patliputra
21.	Hyderabad	Bhagyanagar
22.	Guwahati	Pragjyotishpura
23.	Bidar	Muhammadabad
24.	Kalaburagi (Gulbarga)	Ahsanabad
25.	Warangal	Orugallu

 

This is a worldwide phenomenon

India was not the only colonized country and so this phenomenon of changing names with times is prevalent in many countries. Then again English remains the commonest language the world speaks and understands and if English speakers find it difficult to pronounce a local name they promptly change it to one that suits them. Let us see a few examples:

1.      Munich, Germany: The Bavarian city we call Munich is called München in German. However, the English version is closer to the original – Munichen, roughly meaning "monks' forum". It's just that it has changed in German over the years.

2.      Cologne, Germany: Most of the time the English exonym derives from the French version. This is the case with Naples, Rome and Belgrade, but most notably Cologne. In German, it's Köln. In Roman times, it was called Colonia Agrippina, meaning "city of Agrippina". The French language only uses the letter K in loan words, hence deviating more towards the Latin than the German name for the city.

3.      Vienna. Austria: Some exonyms have a much more complicated back-story, however. The endonym  used locally is Wien. But the settlement was originally called Vindobona, a melange of Celtic and Roman. How this became Wien is disputed, with no one single convincing explanation. There is no W in the Italian language, however, so the Italians called the city Vienna, and the English went along with the Italian version.

4.      Prague, Czechia: The Czechs call their own capital Praha, which roughly means "threshold" in the Czech language. But Prague hasn't been under Czech control for much of its history. It was part of the Habsburg Empire for a long time, and German was the language of the court. German-speakers are just as bad as English-speakers for renaming places to make them easier to say, and the Habsburgs preferred Prag to Praha. The English version comes from the French interpretation of the German version.

5.      Florence, Italy: When Florence was founded in 59BC, it was called Florentia, which is its Latin original name. In German, it's Florenz. In Spanish, it's Florencia, but the locals call the city Firenze, and that's because the Italian language – particularly the Florentine vernacular – took over from Latin. It went through stages of being called Fiorentia and Fiorenze. The English version, therefore, is closer to the original Florentia.

6.      Mexico City: Mexico City is older than the country of Mexico, and is surrounded by the state of Mexico. Yet, up until 2016, it was officially known as Distrito Federal. The drive for Distrito Federal to become a state led to the name change, and the name chosen was the one the rest of the world uses. Mexicans still call it Distrito Federal.

7.      Cairo, Egypt: In Arabic, Al Najm Al Qahir is the conquering or vanquishing star – aka, Mars. Mars was allegedly rising when the current Egyptian capital was founded; hence the official name of Cairo is Al-Qāhirah. Approximately, this means the vanquishing city or place of Mars. As with many names of Arabic origin, the Europeans mangled this until it came out as Caire in French, Kairo in German and Cairo in English.

8.      Doha, Qatar: In Arabic, it's Ad-Dawḥah. But Arabic script doesn't transcribe perfectly to Latin script, so you can end up with several different spellings of the original. Sometimes the translated names drop the Al or Ad in front of place name, and at other times they incorporate it, as with Algiers – locally known as Al-Jazā'ir. So Doha is a compromise which the English speaking world has made.

9.      Casablanca, Morocco: Casablanca was built on the ruins of a place called Anfa, but the Portuguese and later Spanish had a big hand in its creation and rule. Casablanca is a Spanish name, meaning "white house". After an 18th century earthquake flattened the city, however, the local sultan rebuilt it and called it Al-Dār al-Bayḍā. This also means "white house", but in Arabic. It's the official name of the city today, although many locals call it Casa, and the rest of the world has stuck to Casablanca.

10. Bangkok, Thailand: The Thai capital has an absurdly long official name, which is usually shortened in official documents to Krung Thep Maha Nakhon. Or, by normal Thais, to Krung Thep. Bangkok did exist west of the Chao Phraya river, but King Rama I moved it to the more easily defensible eastern bank in 1782. He renamed the capital in the process, and the name has undergone several iterations since. Perhaps because there have been so many iterations, the rest of the world has just ignored it all and stuck with the original name from when the city was on the west bank

 

Countries changing names

Holland became the Netherlands to present itself as an open, inventive, and inclusive country. Ceylon was a Portuguese name given to the island nation in 1505 but in 2011 it became Sri Lanka to shrug off the colonial hangover.  The former Republic of Macedonia changed its name to the Republic of North Macedonia in February 2019. The main reason for the change in name was to become a part of NATO, and also to distinguish itself from its neighbour, Greece, which has a region named Macedonia. Czech Republic shortened its name to Czechia in April 2016. African countries Swaziland changed to Eswatini and Alto Volta became Burkina Faso, which in local language means ‘land of whole men’. Burma became Myanmar in 1989 to preserve its local language Myanma and Siam changed to Thailand in 1939 as the name meant ‘country of free people’!

 

 

So places have been named and re-named from time to time by the victors, for the ease of pronunciation, to designate their heritage, to satisfy political ideologies and to honour great men and women of history. The best example perhaps is St. Petersburg. Soviet leaders wanted to negate Russia's imperial past, and so they renamed the city in honor of the man who was the driving force behind the Bolshevik Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and it became Leningard. As Communism began to collapse, Leningrad changed its name back to St Petersburg. Dropping Lenin's name meant abandoning the legacy of the Russian revolutionary leader. Communists fiercely opposed the change, but the Orthodox Church supported the idea. So, when it comes to names, the vanquished do not have a say!