BENGALURU, INDIA, August 22, 2007: It is official. The silicon city Bangalore will no longer be called Bangalore. Instead, it will be called Bengaluru. So what impact does this name change have on the city and the cosmopolitan crowd that it houses? The native of Karnataka is happy and says that the name was always Bengaluru, but the British came and changed it. It is just that the name has been restored, says Ramesh, a shop keeper. However, the younger generation does not sound too enthusiastic about the name change. They feel that the image of the city may take a beating worldwide as the name does not sound too appealing or modern.
Bangalore was originally known as Benda Kaluru and then became Bengaluru following which the British renamed it as Bangalore. Puja Sharma, a BPO employee, says that the name is just for official purposes, but they would continue calling it as Bangalore as it sounded better.
Businessmen in the city are however not too happy. They say that Bangalore had become a brand name and this change in name may hurt. Apart from Bangaluru there are other cities in Karnataka too which have got a new name. Mysore becomes Mysuru, Mangalore is Mangaluru, Hubli is Hubbali, Shimoga is Shivamoga, Chickmagalur is Chickmagaluru, Bellary is Ballary, Hospet is Hosapete, Tumkur is Tumakuru, Gulbarga is Kalaburgi and Kaup has become Kapu.
(HPI note: the following is from a less kind article, here, that appeared December 14, 2005, when the change was first mooted. “Beantown,” incidentally, is the nickname for Boston, Massachusetts, and doesn’t seem to have done them any harm.)
“The Indian IT hub of Bangalore is about to be rebranded as Bengaluru in recognition of the original name of Benda Kaal Ooru – that’s “boiled beans town” in the local Kannada language. According to the Beeb, this rather unsavoury name came about when a king named Vira Ballala lost his way on a hunting expedition and was eventually offered boiled beans by an old lady. In recognition of this act of kindness, he named the place Benda Kaal Ooru. Along came the Brits and, since they really couldn’t be asked to say Benda Kaal Ooru, they simplified the name to Bangalore. Nor can the locals apparently be asked to say Benda Kaal Ooru, since the new moniker is the ‘phonetic variation’ of the hard-to-pronounce original. The new name was announced this week by chief minister of Karnataka state, Dharam Singh, in response to a demand from a group of Kannada-language writers. One of them, UR Ananthamurthy, reckons the locals already call the place Bengaluru, so no big deal. Others disagree. Bob Hoekstra, Philips’ local head honcho, told AP: ‘We have spent 15 years building Bangalore as an international brand and going back to the native name could hurt that brand. It is like going from Philips to Philippos.’ “