It is really a good news that “Orissa” will be spelled as “Odisha” and “Oriya” will be spelled as “Odia”. I am an author of this blog since a long time, but never posted anything. After reading the post “British misspelt “Orissa” is now Odisha!” by Smita. Here I am going to focus how it could affect other.
The main effect of this change could be change of subdivision code (ISO 3166-2) for Odisha or Odia. Currently we are using IN-OR for Orissa and Oriya. Will this change into IN-OD or anything similar? There are many places where we use “or” to represent Orissa or Oriya. Will this modified to “od” or anything similar to represent “Odisha” or “Odia”?
Google ଓଡିଆ (Google Odia) is available at http://www.google.com/intl/or/. It will not be much difficult for them to change into http://www.google.com/intl/od/ (and this is available). Similarly, ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପେଡିଆ (Odia Wikipedia) is available at http://or.wikipedia.org/ and this can be changed into http://od.wikipedia.org/. You will find many such places which need a change accordingly, if we insist. If we think this as unnecessary, then we can easily avoid now. We don’t feel much difference, as we are used to it. We may feel uneasy while switching from “or” to “od”. Most of us must be feeling uneasy while using “Odisha” and “Odia” instead of “Orissa” and “Oriya”. I also mistype this while writing this post, again I need to edit this. Soon this will be habituated and will not commit more mistakes. But if we will not replace “or” with “od”, our new generation might feel uneasy. Some of these task could be difficult, but not impossible.
By the way, I am thinking, why do we call Bharat as India?
Image credit: Fickr – Raghuveeran – Konark Sun temple
Leave a Reply