When the English Bard said "What's in a name?" he evidently did not know that with a name mutilated, the civilizational memory can be mutilated and eventually wiped out.

Coming up, a thread on ancient Bhāratīya names of several places. Will continue this over a few days.

Fascinating as it is linguistically, civilizationally it is even more so.

Adri means "hill/mountain". It morphs into "ar". So, Gopālādri became Goaliar (which is the present day Gwaliar).

I had often wondered about Nadia in WB, given that it has been in the news lately for wrong reasons. Do you know that its ancient name is Navadvīpa? (-> Na-di-pa -> Na-di-ya -> Nadia) It was the seat of learning with many great scholars of Navya-nyāya hailing from here.

We come across many place names ending with "gir" in our country but can you guess the original name of Munger in Bihar? It was Mudgagiri. Rajgir was originally Rājagr̥ha (गृह is house). Jahangira was Jahnugr̥ha.

The "pat" in Panipat, Sonpat come from "prastha" ("Table-land on top of a mountain"). Their original names were Pāṇiprastha, Śoṇaprastha respectively. Similarly Bagpat is originally Bhāgaprastha.