Long station names in Kerala

Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have a well-deserved reputation for long place names, which I have covered here earlier. Another interesting point noticed by one of my friends is the unconventional Devanagiri fonts used in station signs in parts of South India.

Here is a random sample of station signs in Kerala. They have varying Devanagari fonts. Transliteration into Hindi is not always correct.

The longest station names in Kerala would probably be these two:

The capital:

And this smaller place:

A few more at random:

Alappuzha was earlier called Alleppey, which is uncomfortably close to Aleppo in Syria.

In the above two cases, “South” has been transliterated into Hindi while “East” has been translated.

(This is close to Tamil Nadu, so Tamil also appears).

And finally a short one.

Veli is accompanied by Kochuveli or “Small Veli”. However, Kochuveli station is a terminus and much larger than Veli station.

Hindi purists would note that sometimes the script used is not “standard”.

East is East

Here we explore the stations in India with the suffix “East”. There do not seem to be any with the prefix.

It is not supposed to be a comprehensive list.

The best known one is Bengaluru East:

Including its predecessor above.

Here, the Hindi word and Kannada word seem to be correct translations.

Now to smaller places like Kundara in Kerala:

While Hindi is correct, Malayalam is still East transliterated.

Next to Andhra Pradesh:

Hindi and Telugu appear to be correct.

Tamil Nadu is more complicated. We start with a smaller city:

This was the old station for ages, until a new Kanchipuram station came up to its west. The Tamil word “Kizhaku” seems to be correct.

But Madurai East is different:

Here, a short form similar to E Madurai has been used unlike in the case of Kanchipuram.

Salem East was a small station closed long ago. And Tirupati East became Tirupati even earlier, probably in the 1960s.

It is interesting to see that naming conventions vary even within the same state.

Tailpiece: East can be a middle word, as in Sone East Bank up to the 1940s. Now it is Son Nagar:

Go West, young man

Here we look at differing treatments of the word “West” in signboards in India.

First from Kerala:

Here, the word “West” is transliterated both in Malayalam and Hindi.

And from Rajasthan:

Here, too, the word is transliterated rather than translated into Hindi.

Tirupati West, next to the larger Tirupati which was known as Tirupati East long ago.

Here, the appropriate words in Telugu and Hindi have been used.

In Tamil Nadu:

West is transliterated into Hindi and Tamil.

There used to be a West Point near Darjeeling but it does not exist now.

Let us see if other directions are translated or transliterated in signs in India.

Meanwhile, here is Maharani Pashchim in Uttar Pradesh:

Finally, we stop over in West Berlin:

The Germans are not at fault, as their word for West is West.

(This reads: Warning! You are now leaving West Berlin).

However the terms East Berlin and East Germany were never used by the concerned governments.