Azhagiri is now Alagiri

Pronouncing his name they tumble. His North Indian cabinet colleagues, officials, TV anchors and even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, especially, find it difficult utter his name. The correct ‘zha’ of Tamil in his name cannot be written in English for phonetics and so also can it be pronounced in Hindi.

And so, Union Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister M K Azhagiri has now decided to settle the matter — he’s not ‘Azzagiri’ (as they now pronounce in Delhi), but ‘Alagiri’.

Henceforth he will be officially spelt ‘Alagiri’ and the new spelling would be notified in the gazette as well, sources close to him said. ‘‘Everybody, including the Prime Minister, was mangling his name.

Prior to the swearing-in ceremony, he was asked how he wanted his name to be pronounced and spelt. “For the benefit of his colleagues, he has now decided to make his name simpler and easier by changing the spelling,’’ sources said.

The ‘zh’ in Azhagiri is pronounced the same way as ‘l’ in Tamil, but the phonetic similarity is not intelligible to non-Tamils because the spelling does not reflect the pronunciation. Karunanidhi’s daughter and Rajya Sabha MP, K Kanimozhi, has been another victim of this common mispronunciation. ‘‘When people in Delhi call out my name, I can barely make out that they are referring to me,’’ she said.

Changing his name couldn’t have been an easy decision for the Union Minister, whose father is an erudite Tamil scholar, and for whom the ‘zhagaram’, as the unique consonant is known, may be the crowning glory of the Tamil language.