Kolkata has two street-name systems running at once. There is the official one, renamed in waves after independence, and there is the one people use, which is older and largely descriptive.
Rabindra Sarani is Chitpur. Mother Teresa Sarani is Park Street. Jawaharlal Nehru Road is Chowringhee. In each case the official name is on the sign and the older one is in the taxi driver's head.
The trade names
The Company's settlement plan put trades into their own quarters, and the names are the record of it. Kumartuli is the potters' quarter, from kumor. Sutanuti was the cotton-yarn market. Colootola is where the oil pressers, kolus, worked. Ahiritola was the cowherds', from ahir.
Almost every one of those trades has left except the potters, who are still in Kumartuli, still using river clay, three hundred years on.
The garden names
Bagbazar is the garden market. Chorbagan, where Marble Palace stands, is the thieves' garden, and nobody has ever satisfactorily explained why. Hatibagan is the elephant garden, and there were elephants: the Nawab of Bengal's, stabled there before the city closed in around them.
“Half the city is named after a garden that has not existed for two hundred years.”
The awkward ones
Bowbazar is a corruption of Bahu Bazar, the bride's market, said to be named for a house Bishwanath Motilal gave his daughter-in-law. Sonagachi, the city's largest red-light district, is usually traced to a Sufi saint called Sona Gazi, which may or may not be true and is repeated because the alternative etymologies are worse.
Then there is the city's own name. Kalikata was one of the three villages, and the most durable reading traces it to Kalikshetra, the ground of Kali, after the shrine at Kalighat. Job Charnock did not name it. It was already called that.
What renaming does and does not do
Renaming Dalhousie Square to BBD Bagh, for the three men who shot the inspector-general of prisons in the Writers' Building in 1930, worked. People use it.
Renaming Park Street did not. The rule appears to be that a name sticks if the thing it replaces was itself imposed, and does not if the old name was simply what the street was.
