Place-names

This is my contribution to the Ecotone group-blogging topic, Place names:

Living in an ex-colony, I've discovered, means that place-names are highly mutable. The funniest example came during the Vietnam War, when the American Consulate in Calcutta went to sleep on Harrington Street and woke up on Ho Chi Minh Sarani - a little joke played on the Americans by the Communist government of the state of West Bengal, which continues to this day. (There's a useful page here with old and new names for Calcutta streets - I wish there were one for Chennai.)

The city where I live was called Madras for 350 years, since the British cobbled it together from a number of existing villages. (It survived long enough to give America a fabric called 'bleeding madras,' in the sixties of the last century.) In 1996, some local politicians decided that Madras was a 'colonial' name, and should be replaced with a 'real' Tamil name, Chennai. Ironically, the writer Shashi Tharoor has some scathing things to say (this is the cached version -- couldn't get the original) about the name and the decision. It seems that Chennai was originally Chennappa-pattinam, a settlement named after a local Telugu (not Tamil) chieftain. Local historian S. Muthiah thinks that, if the name had to be changed at all - he opposed it - it should have been changed to Mylapore, the largest of the existing villages brought within the city limits. Mylapore was an ancient seaport, which sent traders and culture-bearers across the sea to Southeast Asia. However, the city's residents were not asked for their opinions, and here we are in Chennai.

Names are being changed all over the country. In the state where I live, Thirunelvelli (Sacred Rice Field) was too hard for the British to pronounce, so they called it Tinnevelly. It has now reverted to its old name. Likewise Thiruchirapalli, which the British called Trichinopoly. And Udhagamandalam, which was 'anglicised' into Ootacamund -- but never mind, everyone has always called it Ooty.

Within the city, street names are changing too rapidly for most. Mount Road and its successor, Anna Salai (named for the late politician Annadurai, whose nickname was Anna, 'big brother') co-exist fairly comfortably. I wrote earlier about how I discovered that Lattice Bridge Road, or LB Road, had been renamed Dr. Muthulakshmi Road -- and that change apparently happened at least two years ago. It is still known by its old name.

At one stage, the state government decreed that caste names should be removed from the road names -- since caste is linked with social status. So Moubrays Road became C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer Road, and then 'Iyer' was dropped. A row of small streets in George Town, which was Black Town -- i.e. the 'native' town -- until the early twentieth century, had been named for local merchants, whose caste name was Chetty. Now instead of Linghi Chetty Street, Kondi Chetty Street, Arabulu Chetty Street and so on, we have Linghi Street, Kondi Street, Arubulu Street... I have been told that somewhere in the city there was a Lady Nair Street, named for the grandmother of a friend of ours, who had been ennobled by the British. After the caste names were removed it became Lady Street.

Some names change by popular usage: as spoken in Tamil, Hamilton Bridge lost its L and sounded like Ambittan ('barber') Bridge. It was translated back into English as Barbers Bridge. Now it has been renamed for a champion of rights for Untouchables, or Dalits, as they are called today: Ambedkar Bridge.

I'm sure that the British names which still remain - Peters, Lloyds, General Patters, Chamiers, Bishops Garden, and so on - will vanish eventually. You have to be quick on your feet to keep up with all this, or things slip out from under you. When I started writing this blog I had to decide whether to refer to Madras or to Chennai, and I opted for inevitability. But when people talk to each other it's still Madras. Or sometimes Chennai. Everything exists at the same time.