TNN

Bangalore, May 28: Should it be Bengalooru or Bengaluru? Mysooru or Maisuru? The decision is not just one of inclination, but systematically decided upon by the Survey of India (SoI).

With Karnataka seeking the renaming of 13 of its cities in one go - as Kerala did a few years ago - the SoI has marked out how the names should be spelt in English.

"It is decided upon the Hunterian system of transliteration, which we have been following from the British times. Each vernacular name is spelt based on the specific phonetic sound in the local language,"SoI's Bangalore division director Brigadier A K Padha said.

The Karnataka government sent spellings like Bengalooru, Mysooru and Mangalooru, writing it out in Hindi also to get the sound right. But based on phonetics, the SoI head office in Dehra Dun made it Bengaluru, Maisuru and Mangaluru.

The state unit, on its part, had sent a noobjection certificate on the issue. Padha said the British, despite
anglicising all city names to suit its convenience, including Bangalore and Mysore, had themselves evolved the system of representing the vernacular sounds phonetically in the English language.

"This is called Roman English. The British had to learn how to use vernacular words, so they evolved this system to tell them what the pronunciation should be,"he explained.

The state initially planned to change the name of just Bangalore to mark the state's Golden Jubilee year Suvarna Karnataka.

Soon, Mysore and Mangalore got added to this list, then a whole bunch of cities - Tumkur, Hospet, Bellary, Shimoga, Hubli, Chikmagalur, Belgaum, Gulbarga and Bijapur - were added and sent to SoI.

Finally, Kaup was added with a separate letter (changed to Kapu) and cleared by the state unit. The process, however, is still expected to take some time as the reactions from various government departments are awaited, before the Union home ministry finalises it.