Names in Hindi
How we write them, and how to tell us when we are wrong.
Where a Hindi name comes from
- The Election Commission's own Hindi. Where the Commission printed a candidate's name in Hindi for that election, we show that form.
- Our spelling, word by word. Otherwise we build the name from the Commission's Hindi spelling of each word elsewhere, then from words we have checked ourselves.
- Words we had to work out. A word the Commission never printed in Hindi goes through automatic transliteration tools and then two independent reviewers who do not see each other's answers. We accept a spelling only when two checks agree. Where they disagree, a third look decides, and the hardest cases are decided by the site owner.
We write by sound
A name is spelled the way it is spoken in its own language, because that is what a reader hears and what a family would write. English spellings of Indian names are a rough guide; they often hide the sound. So we start from the sound and use the English letters only to identify the name.
The choices that matter most for South Indian names:
- The Tamil and Malayalam “zh” sound has no letter in Hindi, and the usual झ or ल would change the name. We write it ऴ and explain the letter on the page.
- Tamil names that begin with E are spoken with a light “y” in front, so they begin ये (and यि or यी before certain letters).
- Telugu, Kannada and Tamil “t” and “d” keep the tongue-curled sounds (ट, ड, ण) where the language has them, and “th” is थ in these languages, not त.
- The Tamil ending “-ai” is the full vowel अई (पिल्लई), not a short ै.
The same idea applies to every other language: we do not explain each word, we apply the sound of the language it comes from.
The rules we follow
| Rule | Example |
|---|---|
| We follow the letters of the English spelling. We never swap a name for a different one we think was meant. | RUNAKUMARI stays रुणाकुमारी, not अरुणाकुमारी |
| A name is spelled the way its own language sounds, not the way the English letters would read in Hindi. | Thane is ठाणे, not थाने |
| Telugu, Kannada, Odia, Marathi and North-eastern names keep their retroflex sounds (ट ड ण). | REDDY is रेड्डी |
| We do not use the Marathi letters ळ or ॲ. The one exception is the Tamil and Malayalam sound ழ / ഴ, written ऴ. A note explains the letter the first time it appears on a page. | KANIMOZHI is कनिमोऴी |
| A Tamil name that starts with the vowel எ or ஏ begins with the spoken y-glide, ये. | ELUMALAI is येऴुमलई |
| TH in a South Indian name is थ; in a Sanskrit name it is त. | MUTHU is मुथु, but KARTHIK is कार्तिक |
| A Tamil final -AI is अई. | PILLAI is पिल्लई |
| Titles and initials follow the Election Commission's Hindi results pages. | DR. is डॉ., MD. is मो. |
| A nickname the Commission prints in quotes is shown in brackets. Stray marks, serial numbers and "son of" tails that came with the source are left out of the Hindi display. | YAGYANAND ‘MADHUKAR’ becomes यज्ञानंद (मधुकर) |
| Seat names follow the newest Election Commission form. A seat with the Tamil or Malayalam ऴ sound shows the spelling people know, with the true sound in brackets. | Kozhikode is कोझीकोड (कोऴिकोड) |
| Party names follow the Commission's own Hindi where it printed one. In Tamil party names the ழ sound stays ड़, as the Commission writes it. | Tamilaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam is तमिलगा मक्कल मुन्नेत्र कड़गम |
| State and district names are in Hindi too. Numbers keep Latin digits, grouped the Indian way. | 1,23,456 |
Problems we met
- The Election Commission prints the same name in more than one way across years and files. Where its own Hindi form exists we use it; where its forms disagree we pick the one that fits the rules above.
- The Commission's Hindi sometimes uses a letter that does not belong to the name's language. A Marathi ळ turned up in a Gujarati surname, for example, and we corrected it by hand.
- Automatic transliteration tools disagree with each other, especially on South Indian and North-eastern names. Where two checks agree we accept the spelling; where they do not, the site owner decides, often by listening to the name read aloud.
- The Tamil and Malayalam ழ / ഴ sound has no Hindi letter. We chose ऴ because that is how the sound is written most clearly, even though many readers have not seen it before.
- Some source records carry stray marks: quotation marks around a nickname, digits, a father's name pasted into the name field. These are cleaned only in the Hindi display; the original record is kept as the Commission printed it.
- Old elections have fewer printed Hindi forms, so more of their names rest on our rules than on the Commission's own spelling.
- Spellings are judgements about sound. For a name we have not heard spoken, a spelling can be wrong or only one of several acceptable ones.
Credits
The Hindi names were prepared with the help of AI tools, always under the site owner's rules and decisions.
- Claude (Anthropic) wrote the checking tools, reviewed spellings and helped build the Hindi pages.
- Gemini on Google Cloud gave an independent second opinion on spellings and helped settle disagreements. Google's transliteration service and Google Cloud text-to-speech voices also helped, the latter for the narrated tour.
- AI4Bharat's IndicXlit, an open transliteration model, provided first machine guesses.
Every spelling that went live was checked against the rules above, and the site owner made the final decisions.
Found a mistake?
Write to hello@billionballots.com. Please send the page address, the name as it appears, the spelling you expect, and a source if you have one, such as the Election Commission's Hindi page or a newspaper.
We check each report against the Commission's printed forms and the rules above. A confirmed correction goes live with the next update of the site, and it is applied everywhere that name appears.
The Commission's own publications remain the authority for every result. About this project