India or Bharat?

[cassowary]

A controversy is brewing over what to call India. At the G20 meeting, Modi insisted on being called the Prime Minister of Bharat and not India.

India was the name given by the British. It came from the Indus River which the Persians called India River.

[neverfail]

Screw it! They renamed the island country to India's south Sri Lanka for similarly mnationalistic reasons but to me Ceylon still sounds nicer.

[cassowary]

Screw it! They renamed the island country to India's south Sri Lanka for similarly mnationalistic reasons but to me Ceylon still sounds nicer.

Yes. Ceylon is easier on the tongue.

[SteveFoerster]

I'm just over here waiting for one of you to say you prefer 'Rhodesia'....

[neverfail]

I'm just over here waiting for one of you to say you prefer 'Rhodesia'....

Beside the point.

Had it not been for the initiave of Cecil Rhodes in the latter 19th ceentury the country that was later taken over by Robert Mugabe and re-naned Rhodesia would never have been carved out of the African scrub.

As for India well: is you promounce "Bharat" swiftly it comes our phoentiically sounding like "brat".

[cassowary]

I'm just over here waiting for one of you to say you prefer 'Rhodesia'....

We never thought of renaming Singapore, a name the British gave us. It’s actually an Indian name. Sing means “lion”. “Pore” or “Pur” means city.

Here are a few examples:

Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Dispur, Dimapur, Nagpur, Saharanpur, Lakhimpur, Berhampur, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jabalpur, Yesvanthpur, Raipur, Bilaspur.

When independence came, many newly minted countries started renaming the streets and towns. We were too busy making money to bother. To this day, no streets or roads have been renamed.

[neverfail]

I'm just over here waiting for one of you to say you prefer 'Rhodesia'....

We never thought of renaming Singapore, a name the British gave us. It’s actually an Indian name. Sing means “lion”. “Pore” or “Pur” means city.

Here are a few examples:

Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Dispur, Dimapur, Nagpur, Saharanpur, Lakhimpur, Berhampur, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jabalpur, Yesvanthpur, Raipur, Bilaspur.

When independence came, many newly minted countries started renaming the streets and towns. We were too busy making money to bother. To this day, no streets or roads have been renamed.

Renaming place names is for newly minted states insecure in their identities.

Singapore has nothing to prove.

[cassowary]

I'm just over here waiting for one of you to say you prefer 'Rhodesia'....

We never thought of renaming Singapore, a name the British gave us. It’s actually an Indian name. Sing means “lion”. “Pore” or “Pur” means city.

Here are a few examples:

Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Dispur, Dimapur, Nagpur, Saharanpur, Lakhimpur, Berhampur, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jabalpur, Yesvanthpur, Raipur, Bilaspur.

When independence came, many newly minted countries started renaming the streets and towns. We were too busy making money to bother. To this day, no streets or roads have been renamed.

Renaming place names is for newly minted states insecure in their identities.

Singapore has nothing to prove.

Yep. Only bums do that. When we got independence LKY and his colleagues were busy trying to develop the economy and reduce the poverty. No time for all this nonsense.

[neverfail]

Well, there is no controversy over the name of my country.

The name was first suggested by Matthew Flinders to the viceregal governor of New South Wales in 1802. Flinders was the first man to circumnavagate Australia and chart previously unknown stretches of our coastline thus naking the map of this country's coastline complete. The name quickly caught on.

It derives from the name given to a continent the approximate size of Eurasia that the ancient Greeks believed existed in the Earth's southern hemisphere to counterbalance the weight of the lamndmass in the north. The Greeks maned this Terra Australis Incognita: the great unknown south land.

Unkike the New Zealand Maoris who used the name Aotearoa for their country the Australian aboriginals had no name of their own for ours.

[SteveFoerster]

I'm just over here waiting for one of you to say you prefer 'Rhodesia'....

We never thought of renaming Singapore, a name the British gave us. It’s actually an Indian name. Sing means “lion”. “Pore” or “Pur” means city.

Here are a few examples:

Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Dispur, Dimapur, Nagpur, Saharanpur, Lakhimpur, Berhampur, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jabalpur, Yesvanthpur, Raipur, Bilaspur.

When independence came, many newly minted countries started renaming the streets and towns. We were too busy making money to bother. To this day, no streets or roads have been renamed.

Renaming place names is for newly minted states insecure in their identities.

Well, on a national level. But there's a movement within the US to rename streets and public facilities that were previously named after Confederate historical figures, and moving statues of them to private locations like museums rather than leave them in places of public honour. (This is, needless to say, controversial.)

Singapore has nothing to prove.

Singapore also has a large population of Indian descent, and I wonder whether they might look askance on a needless change away from a name with Indian origins? (That's only a question, not a suggestion, since that's well outside my bailiwick.)