South African cricket team failing to pronounce 'Thiruvananthapuram' makes Shashi Tharoor wonder…
Ananthapuri could have been an easier option, Shashi Tharoor observed seeing a video of South African cricketers struggling to pronounce Thiruvananthapuram.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday quipped that Kerala capital Thiruvananthapuram should have opted for Ananthapuri as the name as many people find it difficult to pronounce 'Thiruvananthapuram'. The case in point is a video of the South African cricket team fumbling to pronounce Thiruvananthapuram, the city in which they arrived ahead of the World Cup. Shashi Tharoor shared a video of the South African team players trying to pronounce the name of the city correctly, but only a few made it while others were miserable even while looking at the word.
As a social media user pointed out that this might be the case with even Indians who are not from Kerala, Tharoor agreed and said Ananthapuri might have been an easy option. "I've listened in horror to distinguished actors stumble over the name at the annual International Film Festival of Kerala. Very few of them manage to pronounce Thiruvananthapuram," Tharoor wrote.
Thiruvananthapuram was the original name of Kerala's capital while Trivandrum was the anglicised version of it. In 1991, Thiruvananthapuram was officially brought back in place of Trivandrum. Thiruvananthapuram means the city (puram) of holy (Thiru) Anantha, the cosmic serpent with a thousand heads, on whose coils Lord Mahavishnu reclines.
Kerala has recently passed a resolution to rename the state as Keralam.
