The nine-year journey from Bangalore to Bengaluru

A proposal made by the late U.R. Ananthamurthy on changing the name of Bangalore to its more native version Bengaluru in 2005, the year of Suvarna Karnataka celebrations, has become a reality after nine years.

Though a few institutions — significantly the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike — had voluntarily begun to call the city by its non-anglicised name, the change is now official with approval coming from the Centre.

It was during a meeting convened by the then Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh that Ananthamurthy had suggested the change from the anglicised version to the one that carries “the fragrance of the soil of the place”.

However, the proposal on renaming 12 cities had been in a limbo as it also recommended change of Belgaum to Belagavi, which was opposed by the Marathi-speaking people in that city. Though the Centre had permitted the name changes in 2009, it was with the exception of Belgaum, sources in the State government said.

The approval for the change of names also comes in time to fit into the State government’s plans to rename Belgaum as Belgavi, despite protests from neighbouring Maharashtra, on November 1, Karnataka’s Rajyotsava day.

The name changing exercise also faced lack of consensus over the spelling, since a section wanted Bengalooru and others Bengaluru. The notification on Friday from the Ministry of Home Affairs has stuck to Bengaluru.

Ooru or uru?

A section of writers had wanted the city’s name to be spelt as Bengalooru, to stress on the Kannada phonetic character of the word ‘ooru’. However, prominent linguist K.V. Narayana, also chairman of Kuvempu Bhasha Bharathi Pratishthana, said that English and Kannada differed in their phonetics and the ‘oo’ usage is possible only in case of monosyllabic words where the stress is on the vowels in English. As Bengaluru was not a monosyllabic word, the usage of ‘uru’ is apt. He also added that as in many international forums, the city has already been known as Bengaluru and it is in everybody’s interest to accept it as a standard.