What's in a name?

 In PM last Wednesday Dr Shabnum Tejani ....

<whosThat>
Lecturer in Modern South Asian History at SOAS University of London
</whosThat>

... was talking to Evan Davis about the tendency in Modi's India to rename things – towns, areas, roads etc. etc.  Followers of international cricket will have noticed this perhaps 20 or 30 years ago, when Madras became Chennai, Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Bangalore became Bengaluru and so on. These 'new' names were obviously not new; they were just new to Western ears (particularly Anglophone ears.)

<tangent>
This renaming rights the wrongs of the Raj, some would say. But what happens when a placename was created by the Raj; cases like Abbottabad, named after Major James Abbott in 1853...? For further study.
</tangent>

And Anglophone ears (those of Evan Davis, and most other native speakers of British English) are of particular note.

He started by describing an invitation to a G20 shindig...

<road-not-followed>
Wonder where that word comes from...?
</road-not-followed>

... that referred to India as something that he called /bə'ræt/   – with a schwa in the first syllable ...

<parenthesis>
(or sometimes /æ/,; his vowels varied  but his stress was consistently wrong, accentuating the second syllable)
</parenthesis>

...and the oh-so-English /æ/ in the second. But it's not the vowel sound, that caught my attention when Dr Rejani said the word; it was the initial consonant, an aspirated [b^h].

Aspiration is not meaning-bearing ('phonemic') in English; which is not to say that it doesn't happen:
hold a finger to your lips and say 'pin' and 'spin' – phonemically /pɪn/ and /spɪn/. But you will notice a little puff of air after the /p/ but not after /sp/ – phonetically [p^hɪn] and [spɪn].

<autobiographical-note>
In my teaching days I used to refer – for an example of unaspirated initial p – to the speech of Audrey Hepburn.

<isThatRelevant>
Well yes, actually. Many languages have meaning-bearing aspiration. Acquiring British English as a mother tongue, we learn not to hear it. Learners witn aspiration as meaning-bearing in their mother tongue have to do the same unlearning, laboriously.
</isThatRelevant>

The movie executives who saw her first screen tests would have thought 'The kid has something, that makes her sound sexy'. On the contrary, it's what she didn't have. With her Dutch background, she had unaspirated plosives.
</autobiographical-note>

Evan Davis, who although a native speaker of English, knew that there was something that distinguished his /bə'ræt/ from Dr Tejani's /'b^hɑrət/; ...

<brickbat-dodging>
I know almost nothing about Indian (Bharati?) phonology, but I know enough to know that that transcription is, in IPA-speak, very 'broad' (='not exhaustively accurate, but near enough'). In particular, the /t/ is very approximate, as – I suspect – is the /r/.
</brickbat-dodging>

...and he asked her to elucidate. She did, and he concluded 'More p than b [HD – sounds, rather than letter-names]?' She said (politely making a heroic effort to stifle her frustration) it was an aspirated b, and demonstrated. But like the English speakers ...

<speculation>
Tommies in the Great War? [ Another one for further study.]
</speculation>

...who heard blanc and assumed that as the initial consonant was aspirated it must be 'plonk', Mr Davis had no idea what she was talking about. (At least I don't think he did, but the interview ran out of time.)

The Bharat issue caused quite a stir. 

The FT was aghast:

Narendra Modi opened the G20 summit in New Delhi on Saturday sitting behind a sign saying “Bharat”, drawing immediate criticism from the biggest opposition party and adding to speculation that [sic – a hastily transcribed note, I guess] prime minister will propose to officially rename India.  

Some members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party have been calling for changing India’s name to Bharat. Both names are spelt out in India’s constitution, which refers to “India, that is Bharat”, but until now the Hindi name Bharat was mostly only used in Hindi-language communications.  

However, expectations of an official name change spread this week after delegates to this weekend’s G20 summit were invited to a dinner on Saturday evening in the name of the “President of Bharat”, Droupadi Murmu. Modi’s BJP has called a special session of parliament starting on September 18, but has not yet announced its agenda for the sitting. 

The Independent was more measured.

India could officially be renamed “Bharat” by the Narendra Modi government, according to recent reports that have been fueled by invites for the G20 summit that asked people to join the “President of Bharat” for dinner.

Various Indian media reports suggest Mr Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist government is looking to change the country’s name during an upcoming “special session” of parliament, though this has not been confirmed by officials.

A new official document calling Mr Modi the “prime minister of Bharat” added to swirling rumours that the country could get a name change.

Good luck to them. 

b

PS It was a great relief to me, in yesterday's Last Night of the Proms, when the audience sang Jerusalem AND STUCK TO PARRY'S CHORAL LINE. It's a recurring trial, since cricket crowds started singing it, when everyone swoops up the octave as if they were a tenor soloist.