While politicians have welcomed the decision of the Union government to approve the State government’s decision to change the name of Mangalore to Mangaluru, some students say the change does not matter.
“Mangaluru is as strange as Mangalore. Given a choice people would have preferred Kudla,” said theatre person and Gurkar of Mandd Sobhann Eric Osario. Mr. Osario said shift to localisation of names of places was good but Mangaluru does not reflect the sentiments of the region. Unfortunately the State government had not consulted the people before arriving at this decision, he said.
Writer B.A. Vivek Rai, who is a compendium on Mangalore for the district administration, said the new name has historical significance. “Mangaluru rajya (State) dates back to the Vijayanagara dynasty rule in the 14th century,” he said. A letter written by Jewish trader Abraham Ben Yiju, who stayed here for 17 years, refers to this place as ‘Manjarur’ in letters dating back to 1132 A.D.” He said the city’s name should be spelt the way it was pronounced. He did not favour Kudla, noting that the Konkani-speaking people called the city Kodial and the Bearys called it Maikal.
Senior Congress leaders B. Janardhana Poojary and M. Veerappa Moily welcomed decision to change the name of Mangalore and 11 other places in the State. “It is better to pronounce the name of the place in the way that gives it a local flavour,” Mr. Moily told The Hindu on the sidelines of a function on Saturday. While terming it as a good move, Mr. Poojary said he would not like to politicise the issue by commenting on the decision.
Prathana Bhakta, a II PU student and Poojita R., a class 12 student, agreed that the new name connects better with the city. Praveen Salian, a baker, said people would have difficulty for some time in spelling out the new names.
Drishti Srivastava, another class 12 student, who hails from Bihar, said the new name did not matter much. “We love this city. A slight change in the way the name of city is spelled does not matter much for us. But it makes a difference for the local people,” she said.
