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*India List [http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/INDIA/2013-12/1385892683 post] by Max Smith regarding Marcus F C Martin, a geographer who devised a simple way to understand the old English spellings for Indian places. “For example, FATEHPUR (‘City of Victory’) is a fairly common placename and by the mid-19th century it could be spelled in at least seven ways: FUTTIHPOOR, FUTIHPORE, FUTTAPORE, FUTTEHPOOR, FUTTIPOUR, FUTTYPOOR, FUTTYPORE etc. Marcus saw that the consonants were fairly accurate and could be reduced to a short code: here ‘FTP’ or, if you prefer 4 characters, ‘FTPR’. Then
:a.. treat soft ‘c’, ‘ch’ and ‘chh’ as being the same;
:b.. treat hard ‘c’, ‘k’ and ‘q’ also as the same; and
:c.. treat double consonants as single (‘ck’ as ‘k’, ‘tt’ as ‘t’ etc);
:d.. Ignore vowels, except at the beginning of a name, when they should be replaced by a wildcard, such as a dash (-).
:Marcus was apparently delighted to find, using this principle, that OOMRAWUTTEE was modern AMRAOTI (both names will code to ‘-MRT’). He published a pamphlet which is long since out of print, with coded tables for the 3,900 Post Offices that existed in India in 1877, when they were renamed in standardised form and continued until independence.
:The principle is quite easy to remember and helps enormously when looking up placenames in atlases and gazetteers.”
Maps
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==Also see==
*[[Gazetteers]]
==Place Names in India==
Marcus F C Martin, a geographer devised a simple way to understand the old English spellings for Indian places. “For example, FATEHPUR (‘City of Victory’) is a fairly common placename and by the mid-19th century it could be spelled in at least seven ways: FUTTIHPOOR, FUTIHPORE, FUTTAPORE, FUTTEHPOOR, FUTTIPOUR, FUTTYPOOR, FUTTYPORE etc. Marcus saw that the consonants were fairly accurate and could be reduced to a short code: here ‘FTP’ or, if you prefer 4 characters, ‘FTPR’. Then
:a.. treat soft ‘c’, ‘ch’ and ‘chh’ as being the same;
:b.. treat hard ‘c’, ‘k’ and ‘q’ also as the same; and
:c.. treat double consonants as single (‘ck’ as ‘k’, ‘tt’ as ‘t’ etc);
:d.. Ignore vowels, except at the beginning of a name, when they should be replaced by a wildcard, such as a dash (-).
Marcus was apparently delighted to find, using this principle, that OOMRAWUTTEE was modern AMRAOTI (both names will code to ‘-MRT’). He published a pamphlet which is long since out of print, with coded tables for the 3,900 Post Offices that existed in India in 1877, when they were renamed in standardised form and continued until independence.
The principle is quite easy to remember and helps enormously when looking up placenames in atlases and gazetteers.”<ref>Smith, Max [http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/INDIA/2013-12/1385892683 Place Name] ''Rootsweb India Mailing List'' 1 December 2013. Retrieved 7 November 2014</ref>
==External links==
*[http://www.scribd.com/doc/74258272/1945-Special-Series-No-31-Guide-to-Maps-of-the-Far-East ''(1945) Special Series No. 31 - Guide to Maps of the Far East''] published by Military Intelligence Division, War Department, Washington DC. June 1, 1945 report providing instruction on how to use maps not issued by U.S. military forces.
*[http://s3.amazonaws.com/rootstech/original/Maps%20Syllabus%20.pdf?1348261228 Finding the Obscure and the Elusive: Geographic Information On the Web] A presentation by James L. Tanner at Rootstech 2013
*Robert S. Cragg’s [http://worldpostmarks.net/aboutthesite.htm World Postmarks] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20111107140337/http://worldpostmarks.net/aboutthesite.htm archive.org] link)
**[http://worldpostmarks.net/HTML%20Countries/IndiaandStates.htm India and States] Pre-Independence India and Princely States.([https://web.archive.org/web/20120120201731/http://worldpostmarks.net/HTML%20Countries/IndiaandStates.htm archive.org] link). Sourced from ''English Names for Indian Places; a Coded Index of Indian Post Offices'' by Marcus F C Martin, published 1966. Available at the [[British Library]]
**[http://worldpostmarks.net/HTML%20Countries/pakistan.htm Pakistan], [http://worldpostmarks.net/HTML%20Countries/burma.htm Burma]
== References ==
<references />
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