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Names do matter
The villages, towns and cities have been named after their physical surroundings. The names are usually derived from trees, water bodies and hills, surrounding the respective places.
The study of the names of places became a point of debate after World War II, when the English and the Germans referred to one place by different names, says the Head of the Telugu Department of Nagarjuna University, Yarlagadda Balagangadhara Rao.
He delivered the Acharya Ganti Somayaji Endowment Lecture at Andhra University last week.
Following the debate, the United Nations passed a resolution to standardise the names of places. According to that resolution, if the name of a place had to be changed, a resolution to that effect should be adopted by the Parliament or Assembly of that respective State or country.
He felt that the changing of the name of Waltair Railway Station to Visakhapatnam R.S. was not done in a proper manner. However, the procedure was followed in changing the name of Madras to Chennai, Trivandrum to Thiruvananthapuram and Bombay to Mumbai, and so was the case in renaming Peking as Beijing.
Prof. Balagangadhara Rao who is also the vice-president of the Place Names Society of India, said that the study of place names has been introduced as an optional subject in Nagarjuna University. The classification of a place into a village, town or city was dependent on its extent.
The names of places were derived from the presence of streams, seashore or hills. He cited various examples in this regard. The places on the east coast, which are located on the seashore are called `patnams'. He recalled that the original name of China Waltair was Guntuboyina Palem. He said that Walteru (Waltair) was a Telugu word and not an English one.
B.M.G.
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