There are many places in India which have “Linga” or “Lingam” in their names. Here are few.
Probably the best known, a suburban terminus in Hyderabad.
This serves the famous temple near Bhubaneshwar
Near Chhindwara in MP
Near Guntur in AP
In Telangana
Near Guntakal in AP.
And finally, another one from AP:
While it is marked SCR, it is actually on ECoR.
All these places need to be given more importance now.
Meanwhile in Yorkshire:
You would know the old jokes about Seshappa Iyer and Sheikh Pir who moved to 16th-century Britain and became famous playwrights.
These got a fresh lease of life when Al Gore was Vice-President and later Presidential aspirant, for he had a connection in Maharashtra:
who was associated with this place:
And his wife “Tipper” Gore clearly had some connection with Tippu Sultan.
The combination of Bill and Hillary was known as Billary, which fits in well with the renamed Bellary:
Later, Barack Obama became President. He visited India more than once but did not visit this place:
Perhaps he had visited Barrackpore in Trinidad. That is the birthplace of cricketer Darren Ganga.
Trump and Pence did not have any ready-made jokes like this. There is more scope for PJs now, starting with the former VP and new President:
This is west of Prayagraj.
The new Vice-President has numerous places fitting her name, like this one:
This is near Kadapa (Cuddapah) in Andhra Pradesh.
The surname Harris can be matched to the Muslim male name of Haris.
The venerable 80-year old Speaker of the House also has a place name in India, known for a decisive 18th-century battle:
Some may need an explanation:
Next, we proceed to one of Guwahati’s main markets:
Those familiar with the city will point out that the market is near the jail, where hangings were carried out. The trading community must have thought that Fancy Bazar sounded better than Phansi, which would be bad for business. Hence the present name.
Then there is this small town near Siliguri. It is important enough to be marked on highway signs. Here is one sign which indicates its name:
It is unclear why this nondescript place was associated with hanging.
You can see the town here.
The nearby station was indeed named Phansidewa. By the early 1970s it was renamed:
It is on one of the main routes leading to North-East India.
However, there is another station in India where you can hang out:
This is the Hindi word for “noose”.
This is between Bhopal and Ujjain.
There are, of course, other places with morbid-sounding names. One of the better known ones is Tombstone, Arizona which was the site of many shootouts in the days of the Wild West:
Examples of the town’s history (with a lot of graveyard humour) can be seen in this tourist brochure:
Note these station signs where the Hindi inscription seems to have been taken from Tamil rather than English:
Now compare the sign of Park Town above (top right) with the nearby Park:
One wonders about the logic.
Finally, a similar one from Coimbatore:
Undivided Andhra Pradesh was the land of long and unpronounceable place names. Make special note of the full names of Shivrampally and Jogulamba at the end. Shivrampally has to accommodate 4 languages on its board.
As we have seen in the previous post, a name of a place or person may become offensive if it means something else in another language. We start with this station in the outskirts of Kolkata:
Though there are many words common to Hindi and Bengali, this is not one of them. In any case, the Bengali inscription indicates that it should be spelt Nungi or Noongi. This locality is known for the manufacture of fireworks, possibly the largest such centre in India after Sivakasi.
India has many place names such as Bangarapet, Bangiriposi, Banganapalle of mango fame and the former Bangalore. Then there is Bangkok, where you will find:
Poor Susan! She will have to be particularly careful there – especially as this is to become Bangkok’s main station in the near future.
There are other things traveling Indians will run into, such as this place in Sweden:
I have passed that way by train many years ago, although no suitable picture of the station sign is available on the net.
While this is not one of the largest cities of Sweden, the University of Lund is highly ranked.
Surnames such as Hammarlund are common in Sweden. The Hammarlund Radio Company was one of the leading manufacturers of radio receivers in the US. Back in Mumbai, there is this long-standing establishment near the Gateway of India:
We close with this sign which causes amusement in northern India:
Names like this are found in Gujarat. Morarjibhai’s middle name was Ranchhodji.
To be continued.
Most readers will know the identity of the stations with the longest and shortest names in India.
Copyrights of all these pictures rest with their creators.
We take a look at some other long names, after the undisputed leader;
Here are some others. They are from both North and South:
This category involves initials, which would make a long name if spelt in full: 
This one is not that long, but may be the most difficult to pronounce by non locals:
As for the shortest names, there are two with two letters. One is well known, the other is not so well known though it is odd:
The person seen in the “odd” sign is Vimlesh Chandra, a railway engineer who has collected a vast number of pictures of stations and other items of railway interest.
There are several other stations with 3-letter names:
And this one used to have 3 letters, which was changed to 4 letters for obvious reasons:
This listing is not intended to be comprehensive, but does include the longest name (Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta) and the shortest names (Ib and Od).
Also see this for a global viewpoint:
http://www.railwaystationlists.co.uk/information/trivia.pdf
A collection of picture of stations of the Indian Railways whose names involve fruit:
There is Mango, a suburb of Jamshedpur, which does not have a station. As Robert Vadra said, there is no space for the mango man in a banana republic.
Take a closer look at the sign for Sitafal Mandi in Hyderabad. It appears to be one of the old signs from the time of the Nizam’s State Railway, with the Hindi inscription added later.
One wonders how the citizens of Nagpur allowed a much smaller town to grab the title of Orange City.
And Amla may not be named after the fruit but is supposedly an acronym for “Ammunition Land”, where a large military storage facility exists.
Afterthought-Prior to partition, Afghanistan used to export fruits to different parts of India by train. These fruit trains usually started at Chaman (a railhead to the north of Quetta), travelled down the Bolan Pass and made their way to faraway places.
As the saturation coverage of the US elections will continue for a while, we may as well try to match their leader’s names to place names in India.
While the incumbent President Barack Obama came to India more than once, he does not seem to have visited this place:
His predecessor Jimmy Carter did indeed have a village near Gurgaon named after him. Supposedly his mother had been there with the Peace Corps at one time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterpuri
A halt station called Carterpuri (between Bijwasan and Gurgaon) was listed in the timetable for a few years, though it seems to have closed down long ago and no trace of it can be seen now. A new station called Palam Vihar Halt was built some years later in the same general area, though no trains appear to stop there now.
When Bill Clinton was President, the combination of him and the First Lady was referred to as Billary. Therefore, a logical place for them to visit is:
although it has now been renamed to:
If (somehow) Donald Trump wins, he could visit the small town of McDonald’s Choultry in Tamil Nadu, though the station (between Salem and Erode) was long ago renamed to:
This name change in the 1970s was perhaps the first step against the McDonaldization of India.
We close with this one currently making the rounds on social media, presumably taken in around 1970:
Also read this one: https://abn397.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/present-and-past-us-presidents/
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