What’s in the name of a place?

Residents of Sathankulam, the little town in Thoothukudi district that shot into prominence during the last two months with the alleged custodial deaths of a father-son duo, had recently petitioned authorities for a change in their town’s name. The reason was that it had Sathan in it, which is a Tamil word for Satan. Toponymy has it that the name of the town was Thirukolundupuram or Veera Marthanda Nallur till the 17th century.

But it metamorphosed into the current name after the town became a trade centre between Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. According to the southern Tamil dialect, sathu means trade of goods via bullock carts and kulam is market or where the trade happens. It was called Sathukulam, which transformed into Sathankulam over time, according to experts. 

More recently, another such street got media attention, this time for bearing a name that brought stigma. This street, near the Srirangam railway station in Tiruchy, is called Drainage Street. Residents did wait for an ugly event to request a name change. They have been repeatedly petitioning for it. The name reflected the vicious cycle of caste-driven occupation as the street had apparently got it because the Corporation’s sanitation workers used to live there. Today, most of the residents there are Dalits, and many of them have moved on to other occupations.

But the stigma of their street name remains in their documents. Many senior civic officials were not even aware of the issue till this newspaper’s report recently highlighted the problem. The Tiruchy Corporation may perhaps consider the plea of the residents.  Changes in place names from their distorted colonial versions to the original ones have always been a pet project of most parties in power, both in the Centre as well as in states.

The TN government had, in June, proposed to rename over 1,015 cities and towns based on their original Tamil pronunciation. It, however, quickly rescinded this Government Order after a backlash and also as they had gone ahead without consulting two of the largest stakeholders in the place name paradigm: the Railways and the Department of Posts. Instead of getting into fancy name surgeries, the government may consider acting upon genuine petitions to change bizarre names and save residents the shame of living in these postal addresses.