There is a story behind every name

Chennai

Shakespeare had it right when he asked, “What’s in a name?” He might have had Chennai in mind then. We are not easily perturbed by inconsistencies in our names. Chennai, Madras…what’s in a name? We use the one that comes the most easily to us. But there is no dearth of stories telling us how it got its name. From Chennappa Naik, Chennakeshava Perumal, Mada Raja, Madre de dios, the Madeiros family, a madrassa… the list is endless.

Amidst all the brouhaha about reclaiming the original pre-colonial names, we sometimes confuse which came first, or which was less colonial in origin. In this case, it does seem very plausible that the name ‘Madraspatnam’ existed before Chennai came into existence.

Chennai is a city that has encompassed peoples from many lands. And many of its road and locality names are reminiscent of its colonial roots. Elliot’s Beach, Georgetown, Mowbray’s Road, Montieth Road… Many of these today are called by different names. Some of them are so long that even fitting them into a single signboard is often a challenge. Henry Chamier came to India as a civil servant and rose to the position of a member of the Madras Council, and he had a road named in his honour. That road is now called Pasumpon Muthuramalingathevar Salai.

An interesting story is that of Cenotaph Road. With a name like that you would expect to find a cenotaph there, a memorial for a dead person whose remains lie elsewhere. You can walk up and down that busy road and not find a trace of a cenotaph there… there isn’t one. However, there was one structure with a domed top, dedicated to Lord Cornwallis. Both cupola and statue were dismantled and shifted -- the cupola to the Fort area, where it can still be found close to the entrance, and the statue, to stand in solitary splendour under the staircase in the Fort museum.

‘Old names for new’ is an ongoing exercise everywhere, and often subject to political agendas. A more recent exercise was the ‘remove caste names’ fad. All long names suddenly got shortened. Kutty Pillai Street became Kutti Street, Linga Street and Thambu Street lost their ‘Chetty’ suffix, and so on. West Mambalam had a Balakrishna Naicken Street and a Balakrishna Mudali Street. Now it has two Balakrishnan Streets, and a good deal of confusion.

Not all street names revolve around names of people. There is Avadi, an acronym for Armoured Vehicles and Ammunition Depot of India. Mylapore owes its origins to the story of Goddess Parvathi being cursed by Lord Shiva to be born in these parts as a peacock (‘mayil’ in Tamil).
The beautiful Poovirundhavalli (a place where flowers bloom) mutated to Poonamallee, and remains so till date. An essentially English name, which was shorn of its beauty and cut real short is Hamilton Bridge, which somehow became Ambattan Vaaravadhi, and got translated (literally) again as Barber’s Bridge.

But it’s good to see that at least no one has started applying numerology to street names (yet). Imagine an Annnna Salai or a Raajaajii Road!

Vijay Prabhat Kamalakara is the MD of Storytrails India Pvt Ltd