[anand_hc]

In Kannada also Kundi means bums

With due respect to the whole thread and interesting points, some one found this being hypocritical, I could not agree more.

How many of you are send or plan to send your kids to a school that teaches in respective local/regional language? Hindi / Kannada / Marathi ?

Am sure it would less than 5 %.

Lot of folks learn German / French or local language when they stay abroad for 2+ years & are proud of it. Nothing wrong.

But same folks when migrate to other states within India feel ashamed of learning local language and are proud of not making effort to learn it.

So can we please use same analogy for naming cars from manufacturers.

Let's look internally before we accuse manufacturers of not naming in local language. They reflect larger mentality & hence English / Spanish names.

[Coolman]

Originally Posted by chaudh2s

Why is it, that car manufacturers name their cars in English (or some other language) only? It is understandable for global products like a polo or an octavia, but manufacturers like mahindra, tata or even maruti can easily name their cars in hindi.

. . .

What does our BHPians have to say on this?

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

Ah someone else has also thought about this!

. . .

KSRTC in Karnataka has some good names to their bus services which can easily be used as vehicle names

The naming idea suggested is quite thought provoking !

There are few possibilities that one might then want to consider:

• which of the Indian languages to shortlist?
• how many of those?
• what kind of preference to be given to national languages over the other languages?
• would that please certain states or regions more than the others?
• how about vying for recognition nationally so that the maximum number of audience connect?
• how about trying for recognition beyond the borders - going international?

As a mock case - the creative heads might sit and wonder:

• what words would be a safe bet to get the right connect.
• and at the same time get a clean chit from the prying eyes of the various cults and groups of various origins with various interests.

I am sure, this idea might have crossed the minds of quite of few sitting in their departments and they would have also thought about the points that I have put here and many more...

• Most of the times, they would have convinced themselves - "not now, next time, maybe!"
• And in sparingly few instances, they would have given it shape (but without really underlining their intention of doing so) which has given us the Padmini, the Rajdoot, the Garuda, the Thar, the Gurkha, the Chetak etc...

As quoted by hemanth here, interestingly it is the State Governments that have taken the initiative and are taking it forward to some extent, though it might be related to the services that they provide and not necessarily to the products that they manufacture.

As time flies, we might witness a few more, but making it a norm or even making it commonplace might not really be in the to-do list of those manufacturers!

Thanks,
C_

[Latheesh]

Originally Posted by wilful

Slightly OT - to expand a bit on words in one Indian language meaning something completely different in another.

How about TATA/MAHINDRA/BAJAJ naming their vehicle "Kundan"?

[AstonMartin]

@Latheesh - That name will really make the vehicle a hotcake in the Malabar belt for sure.

[boohooper]

Originally Posted by carwatcher

Premier Padmini
Ashok Leyland Dost
Rajdoot
GNAL Narmada150
Hero (Honda) Karizma (I am not sure whether its a Hindi word),
Ashok Leyland Cheetah
Mahindra Thar
Greaves Garuda
and not to forget
MARUTI

and few others in the past.

But as our psychology goes and also it does create an upmarket feel if the English names are used be it pet's name or especially the Real Estate project's name.
'Sherry' as a dog's name would definitely sound upmarket than 'Shera'.


DLF Millennium City would certainly find more takers than DLF Sahasrabdi Shahar.

Its a very serious and interesting topic if someone wants to discuss which gives an insight as to how a language develops itself.

We have very beautiful words in Hindi like in other languages that can be used and will give that 'upmarket' feel. For e.g. I would prefer 'Indraprastha' over Dilli/Delhi anyday but at the same time I would certainly not like it to be pronounced as Indraprasthaa, so its tricky.

As far as car name goes Cheetah, Maruti, Padmini have that 'upmarket' feel while Dost certainly hasn't, so it won't be easy to come up with a Hindi name that would be upmarket but certainly not impossible. As far as English names are concerned anything goes however weird it may sound.

My Do Paise.

Guess many here on this thread are not aware that the Hyundai named the Verna after the Goan Village where Goa's first Hyundai dealer is located.

[rajivr1612]

If what boohooper says is true regarding Verna, then there could be n number of Indian words which would sound cool. Its all in the mindset.
Just assume a car named "Dombivali" or "Marathalli". Now spell it out in a western accent and imagine the words written in "Magneto" font style. Will sound and feel really cool.
Thus Indian words can be made to have a global appeal.
Anyone tried this one?

P.S. The names suggested are that of places in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

[rajshenoy]

When we think of Indian Names, why are we localizing the name so much ? It need not be funny to be able to sell !!

I love the way our defence names their battle tanks and the missiles, Name itself conveys the strength and message. Heard of the Shaktimaan truck, Arjun, Bhishma Tanks, Tejas Aircraft, Dhruv Helicoptor etc. And I love the Names of Mighty Navy ships too. Brings a sense of pride

Coming back to Cars, I liked the Chevvy Adra SUV concept and even more liked the fact that they openly admitted Adra means rock solid and the word is taken from Sanskrit

So my take is, Indian names can be cool too. Just that we need to love them

[av8er]

Since I had to take this humongous task of naming my new born recently who we decided to give a Sanskrit name, I for one can vouch there are soo many cool Sanskrit names.

As stated above it would be cool to say it out too. Hope manufacturers take notice of this.

We are Indians and we love being Indian and everything that is Indian

[joybhowmik]

I think there's another factor at work in not christening cars with Indian names. Many of the cars e.g. Swift, Santro, Indica are global cars. Global in the sense, that manufacturers have aspirations to sell them across the world - from emerging economies in Africa and Latin America, to developed markets in Europe - albeit targeting different segments, and with different options.
Sticking to an Indian name, may not aid recall - which is crucial for any new car buyer wherever he is.

[Mpower]

There are two Indian vehicles that are/were proudly putting Indian names on their vehicles are exporting abroad as well

Thar & Gurkha

I believe Mahindra also sold the CJ Classic as the 'Goa' in Europe. Interestingly, they gave it an Indian name for foreign markets and an western name for local Indian market. Thats how sad our culture is

Originally Posted by Hayek

Other than the Tata cars and a few sub 4 m cut price sedans, there are no India specific cars. So it's unreasonable to expect Indian brands on them unless the name would have a global cachet. Unfortunately, India does not connote excellence in mechanical engineering to buyers anywhere - it can stand for culture, beauty or cheapness. Hence Indian brands will work for natural beauty products, jewellery, hotels etc. but not for cars.

India specific cars..... Etios, Liva, Datsun GO, Brio, Amaze, XUV, Quanto, Xylo, Bolero ...from the top of my head
Primary market for these is India. Of course, they will export to wherever they can.

Not even going to get into 2wheelers (India is world's biggest market for 2wheelers IIRC)

[Higgs_Boson_i]

Originally Posted by DCEite

Be ready for some brickbats coming your way
======So the appeal of teh name won't be pan India.

Fully agree!!

Coming to the car names in India it is the common names coming from Sanskrit or English which can be understood by all which will work pan India.

[gurupalani]

Originally Posted by wilful

I don't think naming cars in Hindi or Tamil or Oriya would make the slightest difference to the fortunes of the product or our national pride. if a product is good, priced well and marketed sensibly, it will sell well. That we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

So true.
Seriously, how many of us have bought a car because we like its name? A name is just a name, why should there be any fuss on what language does it come from?

On a serious note, we can never develop the pride of our nation or mother tongue by giving localized names to products or buildings. There are other better and more effective ways to do that.

Pal.

[Ferruccio]

Jagdeep Kapoor, ex-Parle Agro has a theory why cars should not have Indian names. The theory is called Desi Khari - English Marie. Those of you from Mumbai will be familiar with the salty, crisp and crunchy local biscuit that goes best with Irani chai. Though it is a biscuit it historically has a Desi origin and will do best if it has an Indian name. Marie biscuits though also a biscuit will do best if has a high-falutin Videshi name.

By that logic, since automobiles are clearly identified as more Videshi than Desi calling them Champa, Chameli is a strict no-no!

[interest]

In my opinion it is just a matter of a product seeming superior (to us Indians) when it is named in a foreign language. As a nation I think we have got into this habit of praising whatever is foreign and ridiculing whatever is Indian. It is only when we see foreigners praising something Indian that we also start appreciating it.
Hindi is not the national language but i think it beats any other Indian language by several times when it comes to the number of people who can understand and speak it. 2001 census puts the % of people speaking Hindi (in the list of languages with more than one million native speakers) at 41% and the next language in this list is Bengali with 8% native speakers. Mind you, this is the list that rates number of native speakers and doesnt include people who may speak hindi along with other languages ( this number actually exceeds 50% which is far higher than the number of people who understand and speak English in our country).
I dont see people not identifying with a hindi name of a car just because they dont understand the language. Afterall how many Indians understand the meaning of 'Hayabusa'? I bet many didnt even know that in VW, V is pronounced as F. As some pointed out, havent we already accepted Trishul, Nag and Akash as names of missiles?
Doesn't Hayabusa sell outside Japan?
It is just our deep seated inferiority complex that has forced us to develop a liking for foreign language names.

[noopster]

Originally Posted by Ferruccio

Jagdeep Kapoor, ex-Parle Agro has a theory why cars should not have Indian names. The theory is called Desi Khari - English Marie.

Great theory. Your post makes a lot of sense

Originally Posted by interest

In my opinion it is just a matter of a product seeming superior (to us Indians) when it is named in a foreign language. As a nation I think we have got into this habit of praising whatever is foreign and ridiculing whatever is Indian. It is only when we see foreigners praising something Indian that we also start appreciating it.

It is just our deep seated inferiority complex that has forced us to develop a liking for foreign language names.

While there is some truth in this, I think you are overstating the case. the current generation that has grown up in post-liberalization India has very few of the hangups that their parents do. Like someone very astutely pointed out earlier in the thread, there are enough good "Indian" names in the lifestyle business, say jewellery. I'm not really sure we're ready for an a desi car monicker, frankly. Chances are it will end up sounding cheesy, unless perfectly executed (Thar, Gurkha, Sumo for example- the latter, though seemingly Japanese was apparently a truncated form of then-MD Sumant Moolgaonkar's name).