The Tamil Nadu government has withdrawn the G.O. changing anglicised names of 1,018 cities and towns in the State closer to their Tamil names, after the changes were criticised by a large section for being inconsistent with the change of names of places like Vellore to Veeloor, drawing widespread condemnation.
A new G.O. with a standard transliteration applied to the names will be issued in three days after Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami approves the new changes, Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Development, MaFoi K. Pandiarajan told The Hindu .
‘Changes criticised’
“The changes were criticised for being inconsistent. That is because three different transliteration protocols were used. Also, the central committee went by the names suggested by the Collectors, who had a Tamil expert each guiding them on the names. Although there is criticism, 90% of Tamil community were happy with the revised names and the feedback was positive. Only 10% of the people, who are English speaking and don't speak in Tamil generally, are criticising,” he said.
Mr. Pandiarajan said that a humongous amount of work has gone into the name changes.
“Pulling back is really not an option. The transliteration protocol needs to be fixed. We have an agreement on which among the three are best, which will need the minimal number of changes. The CM will decide which one,” he said.
One of the models that the government is looking at is the transliteration tool of lyricist Madan Karky, Olingoa.
“The model we have used now is the one used by Jayadevan and other die-hard Tamil experts,” he said.
