CHENNAI: Minister for Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture, K Pandiarajan on Thursday announced that the notification issued for the change of names of 1,018 places in the State in accordance with their pronunciation in Tamil has been withdrawn. The Minister said this responding to a query from Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman, TVS Capital Funds in Twitter.
"We are working on alignment of views by experts on Transliteration standards from Tamil to English. Hopefully, we should get this released in two to three days. The G.O on the change of English names for Tamil names for places has been withdrawn. Will absorb all feedback and reissue shortly," Pandiarajan said in his tweet.
Gopal Srinivasan asked "The BIG miss @mafoikprajan? Dravidian ideologue Su Ba Veerapandian said if the government really wanted to help restore the authenticity..it should first provide a standard for English spellings. It’s not too late for the transliteration standard!"
The notification dated April 1 was released on June 10 and immediately there has been a flurry of reactions to them in social media, political parties and also from Tamil scholars. They lamented that appropriate linguistic experts were not consulted before finalising the transliteration of the names of places.
Some of the names which faced criticism include Koyampuththoor (Coimbatore), Mayilaappoor (Mylapore), Thooththukkudi (Tuticorin), Mathurai (Madurai) and Thandayiyaarpettai (Tondiarpet). Besides, Vellore was misspelt as Veelore and Erode as Erodi. The Minister had earlier told Express that these errors would be corrected. Now, the entire notification has been withdrawn.