Bandra

The original inhabitants of what is now Bandra were Koli fisherfolk who called their settlement Vandre in Marathi. The Portuguese, who built a fort at Bandorá after taking the area from the Sultan of Gujarat in 1534, may have heard in the local name an echo of bandar, the Persian and Arabic word for harbor, used across Indian Ocean ports from Bandar Abbas to Mombasa. Whether or not they made that connection consciously, their version of the name shifted the stress and the vowels in ways that pushed the word toward the bandar sound.

The Portuguese held Bandra for over a century, building the Church of Our Lady of the Mount on a hill overlooking the Arabian Sea in the early 17th century. They converted a significant portion of the Koli fishing community to Catholicism, and Bandra's East Indian Catholic community persists to this day. When the Maratha commander Chimaji Appa took Bandra from Portugal in 1739, he found a town whose name had already passed through two languages.

The British included Bandra in the greater Bombay presidency but treated it as a suburb rather than a center. The Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway opened a Bandra station in 1867, connecting the northern suburb to the growing city below. British administrators and railway documents used Bandra consistently, shedding the Portuguese stress mark and the -orá ending. The railway station's sign fixed the spelling for everyday use across the city.

In the 20th century, Bandra became Bombay's preferred address for the film industry, its churches and cafes giving the neighborhood a texture unlike the rest of the city. The Marathi name Vandre survived in government use and resurged after 1995 when the Maharashtra government officially restored Marathi place names across the city. Today bus stops and signage show both Bandra and Vandre, the two names running parallel like two lanes of the same history.