On Thu, 6 Aug 2009, Mark Theodoropoulos wrote:
and yet I don't see any data for the major Indian cities like Mumbai,
Calcutta or Delhi. If there are Indian cities represented there, I
don't know their names. And THAT strikes me as odd, given that
India, by itself, has about a quarter of the world's population and
it has some of the world's largest cities.
In 1996 we had to learn to replace 'Bombay' with 'Mumbai'; five years later
'Calcutta' became--or rather, changed its official English name back to what
its real name has always been--'Kolkata,' but for some reason Western media
seem to have ignored that one. There does appear to be a Kolkata in
DateTime::TimeZone.
Perhaps because Kolkata was never its real name (Kolkata is the Bengali
pronounciation of Calcutta the name under which the city was founded by
the British.) The local government was suffering from Mumbai envy so they
decided they had to "decolonialize" their name too. Mumbai on the other
hand really is Mumbai to its Gujarati and Marathi speaking inhabitants and
was so before it was anglicized (strictly speaking Portuguesed) to Bombay.
Only the politicians actually care about any of this stuff though.
Bombay, Mumbai, Sheboygan call it what you like :-)
--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jald...@braincells.com>
