Pregunta for native Spanish speakers: Bombay vs. Mumbai?

[Common Sense Party]

In English news production, several years ago they switched to more "modern," less-Euro-centric spellings and pronunciations of many world cities. For example, it's now "Mumbai" not Bombay. It's now "Beijing" instead of Peking.

In Spanish, it seems like they still use Bombay and Peking (at least BBC Spanish does). http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/international/newsid_7756000/7756524.stm Is this common? Any reason why they haven't switched to the newer versions?

Just curious.

[Puzzler]

1. I know quite a few cab drivers from India...

... (as I'm also a cab driver) and they all seem to call the city "Bombay". Many of them are fairly recent immigrants too. However, the majority of them are Punjabi ... not that this necessarily should make much difference.

[Common Sense Party]

2. Hmmm. I did not know that.

Maybe I should have asked why the English news sources switched to the new pronunciations.

[liberalpragmatist]

12. Mumbai isn't merely a different anglicization

It's an expressly different name.

"Bombay" is an English name that comes from the Portuguese "Bom Bahia" or "Good Bay".

"Mumbai" was the name of the original fishing village on the site.

In modern times, the city's English name has been "Bombay" and its Hindi name is "Bambai". In Marathi and Gujurati, the local languages, the name was (sometimes) Mumbai. Most Indians, however, knew the city (and still know the city) as "Bombay."

The name change was very controversial (and still is) -- it was imposed by a far-right political party in the state who were aiming to promote the local culture and subtly discriminate against non-Marathi speaking Indians and foreigners.

[Puzzler]

14. That explains it!

"... in modern times, the city's English name has been "Bombay" and its Hindi name is "Bambai". In Marathi and Gujurati, the local languages, the name was (sometimes) Mumbai. Most Indians, however, knew the city (and still know the city) as "Bombay."


It also explains why some of the Indians that had been interviewed on CNN/BBC about the attack, referred to the city as "Bombay".

[xchrom]

3. you just made me think of street names --

i will probably die calling streets by the names i grew up with.

i can never get used to street name changes.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

4. I've wondered about things like this for 40 years

Why do we call it Munich when the Germans call it Munchin. (Sorry, I don't know how to include the OOmlat and I don't spell all that well either). I've never understood why we call places by different names than the folks that live there.

[Common Sense Party]

6. Yeah, Germany is a great example...

We call it "Germany."

In Spanish, it's "Alemania."

Neither of which sound anything like "Deutschland"

[Bucky]

10. In my history class I've tried using the vulgar names for monarch in the middle ages

But when I have my students go look up "King João of Portugal" instead of King John of Portugal or Kaiser Karl of Ossterreich instead of Emperor Charles of Austria, it only leaves them confused and flipping through the wrong pages in the encyclopedia.

Ironically, we don't talk about Czar John the Terrible of Russia. So the reassigning of names is pretty random. Just ask Cristoforo Columbo of Genoa, or the mayor of Leghorn, Italy.

[liberalpragmatist]

15. I've noticed the inconsistency with Israeli politicians.

American media refers to "Benjamin Netanyahu" (instead of Binyamin Netanyahu). But Rabin and Peres were known as "Yitzhak Rabin" and "Shimon Peres" instead of "Isaac Rabin" and "Simon Peres."

[patriotvoice]

16. It's "Muenchen".

Since the reformation, u-umlaut becomes, officially, ue.
http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/tourist_office/57799/index.html

Etymological research of proper nouns is very lacking: some linguistics student with an anthropological bent could spend a lifetime on the subject.

[Xipe Totec]

5. less Euro-centric?

Yet still use the latin alphabet?

:shrug:

[Common Sense Party]

8. Well, yeah. We don't have keyboards that will produce the

characters for every language's alphabet on the planet. And we want English speakers to know what country is being discussed.

[Xipe Totec]

17. I thought the question was directed to Spanish speakers,

With a kind of "we're less Euro-centric than thou" aroma to it...

Interesting factoid:

Mexico is pronounced with a "j" sound, as if it was spelt "Mejico"

Americans adopted the spelling "Mexico" but changed the pronunciation to a hard "X" sound.

Russians adopted the pronunciation from Americans, but because they pronounce the X, exactly like the Spanish do, they had to change the spelling in order to retain the pronunciation.

So, Russians spell Mexico as Mekcika.

The irony is that if Russians used the Spanish pronunciation, they would spell the word Mexika, and would pronounce it correctly.

[Common Sense Party]

18. Mexico used to be spelled Mejico, in the old colonial days. n/t

[Xipe Totec]

19. So was Oaxaca

Not an uncommon letter mutation.

That is how the hard letter C, with the softening cedilla accent, Ç eventually became the letter S.

[Bucky]

7. unrelated, but I always get a kick out of seeing the name "Inglatierra"

Or better yet, Grossbritannien (sometimes with the original "Großbritannien" spelling)

[Common Sense Party]

9. I think it's Inglaterra

[Bucky]

11. If they can make up a new spelling for it, so can I

:P

[Common Sense Party]

13. True. Go for it!