In the 21st century, languages are dying out because people are gradually shifting to a more dominant language, often due to cultural assimilation following globalisation. The usual reason is that native speakers abandon their own language in favour of a widely spoken one, often from European countries that colonised large parts of the world in the previous century. Another form of cultural assimilation happens when large nation-states are formed from several language groups. Whatever the cause of language extinction, the result is the loss of not just the language but also the unique culture associated with those languages. For instance, during the British colonisation of India, the names of places were anglicised. The most well-known examples are Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, now known as Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata. This renaming of cities (back to their native names) happened after the end of the British imperial period.
In his book "The Jungle Book", the Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling uses the names "Oodeypore" and "Cawnpore" to refer to the cities of Udaipur and Kanpur. The excerpts from the book are provided below:
“There is no one in the jungle that knows that I, Bagheera, carry that mark—the mark of the collar; and yet, Little Brother, I was born among men, and it was among men that my mother died—in the cages of the king’s palace at Oodeypore."
In a different section of the book:
“Umph!” said Big Toomai. “Thou art a boy, and as wild as a buffalo-calf. This running up and down among the hills is not the best Government service. I am getting old, and I do not love wild elephants. Give me brick elephant lines, one stall to each elephant, and big stumps to tie them to safely, and flat, broad roads to exercise upon, instead of this come-and-go camping. Aha, the Cawnpore barracks were good. There was a bazaar close by, and only three hours’ work a day.”
Little Toomai remembered the Cawnpore elephant-lines and said nothing. He very much preferred the camp life, and hated those broad, flat roads, with the daily grubbing for grass in the forage reserve, and the long hours when there was nothing to do except to watch Kala Nag fidgeting in his pickets.
The suffix "pur" is very common in the names of several Indian cities and probably derives from the ancient Sanskrit language and translates to "city". For example, the city of Nagpur has this suffix, and the city's name is probably derived from the Nag river that flows through the city. These names have not just influenced Indian thinking. Even the British developed enduring memories associated with these cities during their occupation of India. The "massacre" following the "Siege of Cawnpore" enraged the British army against the rebel sepoys enough to inspire the war cry "Remember Cawnpore!".
Such name changes, or rather the use of their unique English spellings, happened throughout India. Over the years, such name changes have continued, which correct the English spelling to more drastic name changes. The most recent change (in 2023) is renaming Ahmednagar to Ahilya Nagar. Interestingly, such name changes have resulted from efforts from diverse people with different motivations. To get a better understanding of such motivations, one can only wonder whether a noble laureate could spell the city of Chicago as Kikagu and get away with it.
Bangalore was changed to Bengaluru in 2014 due to efforts initiated by the controversial U R Ananthamurthy, a Jnanpith Award winner. Several other cities in Karnataka were renamed during this same period. Notably, the suffix "uru" is comparable to the suffix "pur". However, the complexity of language has no bounds. Depending on the prefix which is combined with the suffix, one can either have ಲೂರು vs ಳೂರು. For example, in the Kannada version of Bengaluru, the correct suffix is ಳೂರು. However, in the case of cities like Baguru and Malluru, the correct suffix is ಲೂರು. In the case of both types of suffixes, the English spelling is still written as "luru". If the phonetic spelling is to be used ಲೂರು should be – Lūru, and ಳುರು should be – Ḷūru. The key difference is in the first letter, with "La" (ಲ) versus "Ḷa" (ಳ), reflecting a subtle phonetic difference in Kannada. At the very least, Bengaluru should be written as Bengalluru to capture this difference.
Changing names due to cultural assimilation is not restricted to city names. Even in Science, as our understanding of the details improves, names can change. For example, gene names change to reflect the inter-relatedness of genes based on function and evolutionary history. We will discuss the example of CXCR6, which was initially named Bonzo at the time of its discovery. The original paper titled "Expression cloning of new receptors used by simian and human immunodeficiency viruses" describes the naming as follows:
The complementary DNA selected with the SIVagmTY01 pseudotypes was found to encode a new protein of 342 amino acids, which we named Bonzo, whereas its counterpart selected with the SIVmac1A11 pseudotypes encodes a protein of 360 amino acids, designated BOB (for brother of Bonzo). Comparison of these sequences with those in genome databases indicates that both molecules are members of the large family of G-protein-coupled receptors. BOB is identical to a previously cloned orphan receptor, GPR15 (ref. 15), whereas Bonzo has no identity to sequences in the expressed-sequence tag (EST) databases. Both BOB and Bonzo are related to chemokine-receptor family proteins but share only 25–30% amino-acid sequence identity with CCR5 and CXCR4.
Eventually, Bozo/STRL33 was identified as C-X-C motif chemokine receptor 6 (CXCR6), a CXCL16 receptor (A transmembrane CXC chemokine is a ligand for HIV-coreceptor Bonzo). The interaction between CXCR6-CXCL16 has important immune roles that have been the focus of several studies. For instance, CXCR6 is vital for maintaining CD8 tissue-resident memory (TRM) cells in the lungs. Buddhabhushan et al. use comparative genomic analysis of the CXCL16-CXCR6 axis to show variation in the DRF motif across vertebrates, with recurrent CXCR6 gene loss in 10 out of 36 bird orders, the crocodilians, and the elapid snakes. The blog post describing their paper provides some background about the study. While the dominance of one language over another or many others can lead to changes in the names of cities, the dominance of one way of viewing science over another leads to changes in the names of genes. Fortunately, the dominance of scientific thinking is primarily dictated by logic and rational thinking. Unfortunately, logic can only be applied based on certain known facts. Logic can result in illogical inferences if facts cannot be trusted.
