Ealing North
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Steve Pound MP Ealing North |
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What's in a Name?September 2003 In the absence of Piara Khabra MP I have been asked to fill in – with the proviso that I do not, under any circumstances, mention a certain West London football team. So here’s a thought. Does anyone know the real name of Hanwell railway station or where Perivale Police Station is? The answers are that Hanwell is actually called Elthorne Heights as the good citizens of W7 felt that the name “Hanwell” meant only the asylum and demanded an estate agents makeover when the station opened. The Met still believe that the police station in Eastcote Lane, Northolt is called Perivale – although a new sign identifies it as North Greenford Police Station. I thought of these examples when I was being interviewed on the radio last week in connection with the terrorist atrocity in Mumbai. Dozens of people rang in to ask where Mumbai was, and why hadn’t they heard of it. I gently explained that Mumbai was formerly known as Bombay – just as Kolkata and Chennai were once Calcutta and Madras. I’m afraid that I became quite exercised when people objected to this. Why, in heaven’s name, shouldn’t the free citizens of the Republic of India call their cities whatever they want to? After all, this country was once occupied by a foreign military force who named everything in Latin. We refer to London, Bath and York rather than Londinium, Aqua Sulis and Eboracum as we exercised the option to either revert to pre-Roman names or choose new ones once we were no longer part of the Roman Empire. Nations are free to change their country’s names and East Timor is now Dili, Burma is Myanmar and Greenland is apparently called Kalaallit Nunaat. Before anyone else says it I should say that, yes, I do know that Iceland was formerly known as Bejam. So why on earth do people get so upset when India elects to do just as we did? I think that there is a little of the old Imperialist mindset at work here. I used to be desperately embarrassed by the habit of anglicising South Asian names which prevailed in the not so distant past. I can remember being introduced to people at work and told that they were called Pat, Jo or Mark and only later discovering that they were really Pravin, Jyoti and Amarjit. I think that what really upset me was the fact that those who had been renamed never uttered a word of protest. The worst example of this affected Ealing’s first ever Asian Mayor and a very distinguished teacher and politician; Rabindra Nath Pathak. Rabindra was known throughout Ealing Council as Robin Pathak. He never made a fuss, because he is that sort of a person. Might the same instinct that seeks to turn a strange name into its North European equivalent be at work in the case of those who cannot come to terms with Mumbai? I do hope that we have moved on a bit and that we can respect India for its choice of place names and leave it at that. Maybe I was a bit tetchy as I was nursing something of a hangover after the celebrations that followed Spurs losing 3-0 to a football team whose name I cannot mention. |
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| Disclaimer | Copyright | Designed by Bassam Mahfouz. Promoted by Julian Bell, The Labour Party, Ruskin Hall, 16 Church Road, W3 8PP on behalf of Steve Pound MP |
