[Talk-in] Use of official names for cities

Kiran Jonnalagadda jace at pobox.com
Mon Feb 6 20:11:39 GMT 2012


On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 7:36 PM, Arun Ganesh <arun.planemad at gmail.com> wrote:

> I always look to wikipedia for reference as there are always more people
> debating these things over there and reaching a consensus. Correct me if im
> wrong, but i do think Shivamoga, Hubbali etc are the official names now.
> Just like Bengaluru and Mysuru.
>

"Official" depends on which official you mean. Bangalore is Bengaluru
according to the Government of Karnataka, but still Bangalore according to
the Government of India.

The central government has refused to confirm *any* of the new names in
Karnataka because Karnataka tried renaming Belgaum to Belagavi, but the
district government has been lobbying to move into Maharashtra.

Karnataka tried renaming several cities in a single order. The central
government will not accept it unless Belgaum is removed from the list.
Karnataka will not do this because it amounts to admitting a problem in
Belgaum. This stand-off has existed for years. State-funded projects like
the airport refer to "Bengaluru". Centre-funded institutions like the
railways still say "Bangalore".

The media has lost interest in this, so there are few references on the
current status. I posted one to this list a couple years ago.

One simple way to verify current status is by looking at what the major
newspapers say in the list of cities they publish from. The Times of India,
The Hindu, Deccan Herald and Mint all say "Bangalore". I remember seeing a
newspaper that said "Bengaluru", but can't recall which. Thought it was
Deccan Herald, but their website says "Bangalore".

So the question is, which side is the OSM community on?

Kiran
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-in/attachments/20120207/4d0db2ec/attachment.html>


More information about the Talk-in mailing list