The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday withdrew an order it had issued on June 10 to change the English spellings of the names of several places, to align them with their Tamil pronunciations. The order had changed the spellings of 1,018 places in the state.

“We are working on alignment of views by experts on transliteration standards from Tamil to English,” Minister for Tamil Language and Culture Pandiarajan K tweeted. “Hopefully, we should get this released in 2/3 days. The GO [government order] on the change of English names for Tamil names for places has been withdrawn. Will absorb all feedback & reissue shortly.”

He was responding to TVS Capital Funds Chairperson Gopal Srinivasan, who quoted Dravidian ideologue Su Ba Veerapandian, who had said that if the government wanted to restore the authenticity of Tamil names, it should first provide a standard for English spellings.

Among the places whose English spellings were changed on June 10 were Coimbatore, which was to be spelt Koyampuththoor. Vellore was changed to Veeloor. Puducherry became Puthucherry, and Mylapore Mayilaappoor, among others.

The state government had said that the changes were effected to correct distortions that had primarily arisen as a result of the naming conventions instituted by the British in the colonial times.

But many Sanskrit names have not been changed to Tamil even though Tamil literature provides names for those places. For example, Vedaranyam has become Vedaaranyam, even though Tamil texts refer to the place as Thirumaraikaadu. Some people have also wondered why the government embarked on this exercise in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, most controversially, the name of the state – Tamil Nadu – was not changed to Tamizh Naadu, as it is pronounced that way in the regional language.

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