New Indian city names- Chennai

David H | 14:33 Thu 08th Apr 2004 | People & Places

3 Answers

I know most of the changes were to replace the original names with the way the British altered them, so Calcutta went back to Kolkata, Bombay to Mumbai etc., but how did Madras become Chennai, which clearly sounds nothing like it. Was it renamed from scratch?

The people above me

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Quizmonster

Click http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000653.php for a website with one explanation of the name-change. I did a Google search using Madras+Chennai+name+change If you do the same, you'll find many more pages with additional - some of it somewhat different - information.

David H

Question Author

Thanks QM, my intuition was right, it was pretty arbitrary. I think they should change the name of a few places in England now in case they were named by the Romans ;)

Spellmaster

Do this mean we now have to order chicken chennai?

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