Mondo Knows Facts
Several Indian cities reverted to local names
Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai and Calcutta became Kolkata between 1995 and 2001 The changes were driven by state governments wanting to drop names inherited from colonial usage. Mumbai honours the goddess Mumbadevi, and Chennai and Kolkata reflect local language forms. Older names still appear in the names of institutions and in common speech abroad. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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More facts like this
Istanbul has carried three famous namesIt was Byzantium, then Constantinople, and became Istanbul officially only in the twentieth centuryMany capitals have been renamed since independenceSalisbury became Harare, Lourenço Marques became Maputo and Léopoldville became KinshasaGreenland's name was a recruiting toolThe name is usually credited to Erik the Red, who wanted settlers to join him thereThe Caspian is named for a people long goneIts name comes from the Caspi, a group recorded in antiquity, not from any present-day nationThe Ganges Delta is the largest river delta in the worldSpanning 105,000 square kilometres across Bangladesh and India, it empties into the Bay of Bengal.Dahagram is a Bangladeshi enclave connected by a narrow corridorLocated inside Indian territory, Dahagram connects to mainland Bangladesh via the Tin Bigha Corridor.
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Tags: place-names, india, cities
Several Indian cities reverted to local names: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai and Calcutta became Kolkata between 1995 and 2001. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.