The Indian state of West Bengal will now be known as "Paschim Banga" after state lawmakers voted unanimously in favour of the name change on Friday, despite some high-profile opposition. The state becomes the latest in a long list of Indian places to have their anglicised titles dropped and replaced by a name drawn from the local or regional language.
"Paschim Banga" is a literal Bengali-language translation of West Bengal. Other prominent name changes in recent years include Bombay (now Mumbai), Madras (Chennai) and the West Bengal state capital Calcutta (Kolkata). Banga is pronounced "Bongo" in the Bengali language. While local nationalist sentiment has often been the driving force behind these changes, in the case of West Bengal there were also more pragmatic considerations at work.
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