Today, we took Imogen to town as she wanted to buy the last bits for her trip to Chennai, some cereals bar , travellers cheques, antibacterial gel, cup a soups, etc.. Steven went to change one front tyre but was told that the other front tyre was not good enough so he had to buy two new tyres..still it had to be done as soon we will have to drive from Staffordshire to Hyeres.
Back home, I explored the very interesting Chennai challenge blog written by members of Team A who left for Chennai a week ago!
Mumbai was not the only newly named Indian city in 1996.
In August of that same year, the city of Madras, located in the state of Tamil Nadu, had its name changed to Chennai.
Both the names Chennai and Madras date back to 1639. In that year, the Raja of Chandragiri, (a suburb in South India), allowed the British East India Company to build a fort near the town of Madraspattinam.
At the same time, the local people built another town close to the site of the fort. This town was named Chennappatnam, after the father of one of the early rulers. Later, both the fort and the town grew together but the British shortened their colony's name to Madras while the Indians changed theirs to Chennai.
The name Madras (shortened from Madraspattinam) also has links to the Portuguese who were present in the area as early as the 1500s.
Madras is a much older name than Chennai. Despite that fact, the city was still renamed Chennai because it is in the language of the area’s original inhabitants and Madras was seen as being a Portuguese name and/or was associated with the former British colony.
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