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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Bangalore to Bengaluru
A Special Ben’s Place of the Week

Bangalore, the center of India’s booming information technology industry and capital of the state of Karnataka officially changed its name to Bengaluru today. The decision was met with mixed reactions in this southern city of approximately six million, but follows the de-Anglicization of Mumbai (Bombay until 1995), Chennai (formerly Madras), and most recently Kolkata, which was known as Calcutta as of 2001. Local Kannada speakers have been using Bengaluru, a simplified pronunciation of its pre-colonial name, Benda Kaal Ooru, for some time already, but international acceptance may take months or years. Although this new form won’t appear in the Atlas of the World until next year’s update, the current 13th edition does include Puducherry, the newly approved name for Pondicherry on the Coromandel Coast.

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Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford Atlas of the World. Check out some of his previous places of the week.

Recent Comments

  1. Pradeep Kishore Gowda

    the correct new spelling would be ‘bengalooru’ and not ‘bengaluru’,

    The government is yet to formalize this with a gazette notification.

    So, please hold your presses.

    Thanks :)

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