Bangalore (Bengaluru)

During December 2005, the government of Karnataka announced that it has accepted the proposal of the Jnanpith-Award-winner U. R. Ananthamurthy to rename the English name of the city into its Kannada name authority Bengaluru. The new name became effective jointly with the name changes of additional cities in Karnataka from November 2006 onwards, which is considered the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the state.

The history of Bangalore is as rich as its surroundings. Bengaluru was established probably in 1537 by Kempe Gowda I (1510-1570). Kempe Gowda should have selected the name for this new city Bengaluru because his mother and his wife come from a settlement bearing the same name that exists still today near Bengaluru as a Halebengaluru. According to other legends, during the 10th century an old woman gave cooked beans to King Veeraballa in a meal when he had gotten lost in the forest. Out of gratitude, he named the place Benda Kaluru, the “city of cooked beans”. The British under Charles Cornwallis conquered the city in 1799 during a battle with a Tipu sultan and renamed it to “Bangalore”.