Tp Gear Special

[sg]

Why would Top Gear refer to Mumbai as Bombay?

[Prudie]

I still call it Bombay sometimes, it's what I was taught until recently.

[mightyWBA]

The newsagents up the road from where I live is run by 2 Indian Brothers and they call it Bombay.
One of them is over there visiting relatives at the moment and I was talking to his Brother about the show his morning.He only calls it Bombay.
When in Roma ;-)
As far as I'm concerned it's still Bombay,Calcutta and Madras,there are plenty of places around the World we don't call by their real names,eg Moscow,Warsaw,Rome,Copenhagen,Athens.....Thin
k
it's just "trendy" to refer to Bombay as Mumbai.
Peking Duck anybody?

[jno]

trendy, or just correct?

The other places you list basically had English names before dictionaries were invented - in other words, when England was still an island, and insular. Mumbai did not; it's relatively recent.

[SpikeyBush]

For the same reason I still call Chennai Madras, Kolkata Calcutta, and Snickers Marathon

[David H]

I asked this to some highly educated Indians I know online, and the definitive answer is the nationalist party who took power some years ago wanted to assert the pre-empire culture so went about giving the cities names of their own although I didn't ask what they were called before so not certain how they thought of them. But the main point was it was more for international use while most people there still use the names we and they are both familiar with. It was not something most Indian people cared about that much or wanted so I don't think anyone else needs to worry too much either. Look what happened to Kampuchea and Myanmar after a few years for example.

[jno]

what's happened to Myanmar?

[mightyWBA]

There is no correct way of saying it then,just what you feel more comfortable using.
I can still say Swansea and Cardiff then :-)

[Prudie]

I fully agree with you MBA. It's only 'correct' becuase they are names from Asian countries who we mustn't upset. No-one gives a toss that we don't say Koln, Firenze, Napoli or that the French say Londres for example.

[DTCwordfan]

that was a Burmmer of a question there, jno.....

[DTCwordfan]

China has done it too but driven more by the phonetics of Mandarin to our Anglicised version. Bejing-Peking, Guanzhou-Canton Xiamen-Amoy....

[jake-the-peg]

It's funny - some of these new names caught on more than others Mumbai and Chennai seem reasonably popular but I don't think I've ever heard anyone use Bengaluru instead of Bangalore