Bangalore by any other name sucks!

There has been a lot of talk recently about renaming Bangalore to Bengaluru, due in part to the rising prominence of this city in international circles, Silicon Valley of India is one moniker that comes to mind. You can read all about the history of the city in Wikipedia. I will not dwell over the minutiae about this phenomenon. I'll get straight to the point. I HATE this, and other movements to rename cities such as Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkatta etc. Why, you ask? Read on.

India has multitudes of languages and each has its own charm, beauty and idiosyncracies. I do not have a problem with languages themselves, being that I can speak about seven (English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, German, French) and a smattering of Spanish as well. What I do have a problem with is the rewriting of history or revisionistic look back at history. The name Bangalore, to be sure, is an anglicized version of Bengaluru. What is wrong to call the city Bangalore in English, I ask? Yeah, yeah, I know, there will be many comments to the effect of pride in one's city and heritage, and "taking back our city from the British Raj days".

As the name itself is anglicized, there is no way the name can be exactly pronounced as in Kannada. Phonetically too, do you write it as Bengaluru or Bengalooru? Again, can you really replicate the sounds of the letter "l" as pronounced in Kannada? I don't think so. For that matter, there are many letters in Hindi (the anglicized "na" sound has at least two different pronunciations), Tamil (the anglicized "la" sound has at least three variants) and so on. Indian languages have way more consonants and vowels, and half consonants too. So can you really, really transcribe an Indian word into English? Think of the way people spell the name Murthy (Moorthy, Murti, Murthi, Moorty)! So I say leave the name Bangalore as is. Bengaluru would never have become what it is today, if not for the English language.

How do other European languages deal with spellings and/or pronunciations of other foreign names? Very simple, each place name is written differently in different language. (Note: Examples that follow are close approximations of pronunciations, actual phonetic notations are missing.) Examples include, Munich (Muenchen), London (Londres), New York (Nueva York), Germany (Allemagne), Belgium (Belgique), Greece (Griechenland, Grèce) and Japan (Japon). On a similar note, Bangalore is called बैंगलोर (bungllor) in Hindi, benglur in Tamil (actually if you didn't know it penglur).

Leave it as Bangalore! Getting Bengalurued or Bengalooroed is not quite as catchy as getting Bangalored!