A change.org petition was created today afternoon and within four hours the petition has received more than 2000 signatures. Arun Lakshminarayanan, an industrialist from Coimbatore, has started a petition to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, S P Velumani, Minister for local administration and K.Pandiarajan, Minister for Tamil official language and Tamil culture. He has requested to rename Coimbatore as Kovai, instead of Koyampuththoor.
Coimbatore: The Tamil Development Department came up with name changes for 1018 cities and areas in Tamilnadu based on the inputs from District Collectors and Tamil language experts. Based on this, several names of the cities that have been using anglicised names or spellings have been shifted back to using spellings relevant to their Tamil names. In this list, Coimbatore will now be spelt officially only as Koyampuththoor, and the spelling change did not go well with most Coimbatoreans.
A change.org petition was created today afternoon and within four hours the petition has received more than 2000 signatures. Arun Lakshminarayanan, an industrialist from Coimbatore, has started a petition to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, S P Velumani, Minister for local administration and K.Pandiarajan, Minister for Tamil official language and Tamil culture. He has requested to rename Coimbatore as Kovai, instead of Koyampuththoor.
Arun has listed various reasons why Kovai would be a better choice, while Koyampuththoor is the original Tamil name of Coimbatore which was etymologically derived from either Kovanputhur or Koniammanputhur. He listed that this change has many drawbacks. “It is very long, The spelling is difficult to remember & When filling up official forms, etc it will become difficult and time consuming. And we have to fill up a lot of forms in our lifetime.
Kovai is a beautiful, short & sweet Tamil name. it has many advantages - It is easy to say and easy to remember, Spelling is easy. It is fantastic for brand building. Going forward, we have to compete as a city to attract investments, tourists, sell our products & services, etc. And we need a popular and catchy name. Kovai is ideal. We have already been using Kovai for many years now and a lot of people recognise the name easily and it is popular.”
The petition has gone viral now and many upset Coimbatoreans are taking up against this spelling change online and through petitions. Koyampuththoor many feel has a weird spelling and is not resonant of a modern and developed Coimbatore.
To sign the petition to recommend name change to Kovai: Click here: http://chng.it/qjZxNf5c