Mumbaikar

Mumbaikar (Marathi: मुंबईकर) is the Marathi word to identify a resident of Mumbai. The term has been in use for quite some time but it gained popularity after the official name change to Mumbai in November 1995.[1] The change in name and rise in the popularity of the term led to common adoption of the term Mumbaikar. Generally speaking, the term encompasses a whole range of ethnicities and cultures because Mumbai is a "melting pot"

Marathi "Kar" in development of place and family names


It is a general practice in the Marathi language to add kar (which means resident of) to the end of an individuals' village of origin/place of residence in order to refer to those people from there. Based on this general rule, natives of Pune city are called Punekar, Nashik city Nashikkar and so on. It is also fairly common to find people who have their last name based on this rule, so some natives of Goregaon (a large area in Mumbai) have Goregaonkar as their last name, similarly Chiplunkar from Chiplun and so on. Surnames based on profession with kar at the end are also very common.

Notes

  1. ↑ Hansen, Thomas Blom (2001). Wages of violence: naming and identity in postcolonial Bombay. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691088402. Retrieved August 16, 2009.

External links

Look up Mumbaikar in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.