(A moment of light relief)
One of the continual plagues of anything where somewhere has two names
is people continually switching from one to the other.
Usually, this is a zero-sum game; it's moot which one you use. In a
specific historical context, you can get away with one then the other
in brackets (so people don't start wondering why the Danzig shipyards
were important in the 1980s); here, people just tend to change the
primary to the secondary and vice versa. Net result: no-one who didn't
already care deeply about it tends to notice.
Sometimes, they change them all, such is their desire to expunge the
"wrong" form...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Kolkata&oldid=2282…
"Calcutta, formerly named Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state
of West Bengal..."
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk