This is a response to the post here of 31 March, 2022: "[Goanet] LINKS: The Soboicar Project: about those who made the southern part of the island city their home". The post describes "a planned oral history and material memory project among Catholic neighbourhoods in South Bombay. ... South Mumbai, or SoBo, as the locals say, is what inspired the title of our project. Bombay Goans call themselves 'Bomoicars' and our objective is to archive the disappearing stories of those who lived as 'Soboicars', and made the Southern part of the island city their home."
This is a project certainly worth undertaking, and right away, given the speed at which Bombay Goans keep giving up the community's first nesting grounds to move on to the suburbs or up further north or to migrate abroad or back to Goa. I am sure the researchers engaged in this project will recover information about the formative years of this community that should give us something to feel good about. There is one concern, though, and that is over the spelling of the demonym Bomboicar as applied by Goans to Goans who emigrated to and resided in Bombay city over the past couple of centuries. I think the more common spelling has always been Bomboicar and not Bomoicar, as offered, even though tentatively enough in single quotes, in the present project proposal. The name of the city has been variously written over time as Mombayn (1525), Bombay (1538), Bombain (1552), Bombaym (1552),Monbaym (1554), Mombaim (1563), Mombaym (1644), Bambaye (1666), Bombaiim (1666), Bombeye (1676), Boon Bay (1690), Bon Bahia, Manbai (1762), Bombay and now Mumbai (Wikipedia). Among Goans, Bomboi or Bombaim were the preferred Konkani equivalents, at least in spelling. The second b in the name, so far as I am aware, has never been ignored in any variation of the city's name in any other Indian language either. There is a vogue in India now, of course, to modify elements of place names to suit Westernised or nativist palates, and, often, to align names to the requirements of the gentrification process. I also get it that some flavours of Konkani do find some consonants too hot to handle and routinely drop them from words without so much as a by your leave. But a consonant drop (sorry second b!) of this magnitude would be tantamount to eliding, in a way, an important element in the history of a significant chunk of people linked to the term Bomboicar. Of course, one does not expect the Bomboicar descriptor to receive more than a mention here or there in the self-recognition of some community members in the project's written report, but when, and if, it does at all, one hopes it will conform to the more usual, and, dare I say, well-established and inclusive, form.
