Naming the new-born, naamakarana in Kannada, a practice dating back to antiquity and continuing to this day in different sections of society, has its load of sentiment, sanctity and spirituality that cannot be expressed adequately in words. The Bard is quoted as saying that rose, called by any other name, smells as sweet, but that doesn’t apply to names of anything that needs unmistakable identity, particularly individuals. People were required to be identified as son or daughter of their respective father in official records, a law perhaps introduced during the country’s colonial rule, and followed even after change-over to self-rule. Every consumer product, whether naturally obtained (such as food crops) or manufactured (such as attires or automobiles) ought to be identified by unique names. Taking the matter further, every region, every city and even areas within cities need specific names that cannot be played with to avoid confusion, if not chaos. There is hardly any town or village across the country, name of which spells its historic origins,  Mysuru serving as an instant example.

Among the more than 8,000 towns and cities as well as nearly 6,00,000 villages, a considerable number of them are connected with narratives in the land’s epics, notwithstanding the distinction between mythology and history about them. In either case, the names of these locations carry with them strong elements of sentiment, sanctity, spirituality and even a charge of emotion.

During the times of the country coming under alien rule preceding its political freedom, hundreds of places were either named or rechristened as it pleased the ruling class of those times, not only accepted by people but also used in both official parlance and communication among them. Given the move of restoring the earlier names of two cities in one of the Northern States, the mood for undoing the undoing of names by alien rulers seems to be picking up. The anglicised names of many urban spaces in different States, including Karnataka, have been changed to their time-honoured names, an act that received warm response from most people of the respective places, if not all.

Names of places traced to antiquity changed to names reflecting alien rule generates bitterness in the minds of people with deep sentimental feelings outnumbering the other kind who couldn’t care less about names of places by virtue of landmark event at different times. The aliens enjoyed free play in the game of names for places and it is appropriate to undo their undoing of the past.