The latest is change of Gurgaon to Gurugram. The land is believed to have been owned by the legendary rulers Pandavas and Kauravas, who gifted it to Guru Dronacharay, their Guru, as dakshina. Gurgaon is the largest city of Haryana and now it will be named as Gurugram. Haryana is a historic land of the Bhagwat Gita and Gurgaon has been a centre of learning.

Among the cities whose names have been changed in recent past include Madras to Chennai; Bombay to Mumbai; Panjim to Panaji; Poona to Pune; Calcutta to Kolkata; Baroda to Vadodara; Bejawada to Vijayawada.

There is also a demand that the name of Kerala be changed to Keraalam, as pronounced in Malayalam. In Madhya Pradesh, Congress and BJP have locked horns over renaming the state Capital Bhopal to Bhojpur.

Several state names were changed in the post-colonial era such as Madras state to Tamil Nadu; Mysore state to Karnataka, Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar and Uttaranchal was named Uttarakhand, carved out of Uttar Pradesh.

On July 17, 1996, Karunanidhi, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, announced in the state assembly that the state capital Madras would henceforth be officially known by the name Chennai. The land on which Madras is situated once belonged to the Vijayanagara Empire and its famous ruler was Sri Krishna Devaraya. Chennai is the shortened name of what was originally called Chennapattnam, a name given to the area because it was leased out and later ceded to the British by a local chieftan of the Vijayanagara empire named “Damarla Chennapa Nayakuru (Naidu).

Chennapattnam literally means “The City of Chennappa”. The English name Madras is widely believed to have been derived from the name of a famous Portugese Church built for Mother Mary “Madre De Deus” (The Mother of God) and dedicated to St. Thomas (Madre De Deus was anglicized to Madras by the British).

In the year 1995, the right-wing Shiv Sena won elections in Maharashtra and presided over a coalition that took control of the state assembly. After the election, the party announced that the port city had been renamed after the goddess Mumbadevi. Local businessmen and newspapers were ordered to adopt the change.

Shiv Sena’s leadership argued that Bombay was a corrupted English version of Mumbai and an unwanted legacy of British colonial rule. The push to rename Bombay was part of a larger movement to strengthen Marathi identity in Maharashtra. Bombay is Anglicization of the Portuguese name “Bombaim”, which is believed to derive from the phrase “Born Bahia” or “good boy”.

The name Pune had its origin from the copper plates dated 758 and 768 AD. In the copper plates of 758 AD, it is named Punya Vishaya whereas in the copper plate of 768 AD, it is named as Punaka Vishaya. Vishya means region, a geographical area.

Pune is the 9th largest metropolis in India, the second largest in Maharashtra after Mumbai. In 1730, Pune became an important political centre as the seat of the Maratha Peshwa, the prime minister of the Bhonsle Chattrapati of Satara (ruler of the Maratha empire). It was during this period that Pune became the centre of Indian politics. After the town was annexed to British India in 1817, it served as cantonment town as also the monsoon capital of Bombay presidency until the independence of India.

Panjim was the name given by the Portuguese when old Goa collapsed in the 19th century. Panjim was elevated to the status of a city on March 22, 1843. In 1961, the Goa’s capital was named Panaji.

The world Panaji is derived from the world panjani and khali, which means a boat and a small creek respectively, in Sanskrit. Thus the modern word Panaji is a corrupt form of the old word Panjanakhani as inscribed on the discovered Panaji copper-plates dated 1059, belonging to the rule of Kadamba king Jayakesi.

Kolkata is derived from the Bangla word Kalikshetra meaning “Ground of the Goddess Kali.” Some say the city’s name is derived from the location of its original settlement on the bank of a canal (Khal). Some match the name of the Bangla words for lime (kali) and burnt shell (kata), since the area was noted for manufacturing shell-lime. Another opinion is that the name is derived from the Bengali term kilkila (meaning flat area), which is mentioned in old literature.

On 1st January 2001, the then West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya announced that Calcutta has been officially renamed ‘Kolkata’. Supporters of the change say the change will help preserve the city’s Bengali identity.

The demand for renaming of Calcutta first erupted at Bengali Language Demands committee, attended by scores of Bengal’s best writers, poets and cultural personalities. They argued that the changes would preserve the distinct Bengali identity of the city and the state, and protect the Bangla language from the growing influence of Hindi. (IPA Service)