It's the "real name" in the same way as the "real name" of Moscow is Moskva. I.e. these are the names in the local languages, and names in foreign languages tend to derive from them.
That is also true, however in this case the Indian government did officially rename Bangalore to Bengaluru in 2014 in order to drop the anglicised version of Bangalore. Yet many people still refer to it as Bangalore.
For example, Google Maps redirects Bangalore to Bengaluru, whereas it does not for Moscow.
That does not make it the 'real name' and it's not for a government to decree how foreign languages in foreign countries should pronounce the names of local cities.
In this case it is really just a political move to push back against colonial times by changing the English names of Indian cities (not only Bangalore) to strict local orthography. The fact that English is used as a common language in India may play a role in that push because they probably see a need to define names in English (which is ironic).
It also depends on the language. China also did that for Beijing, Guangzhou, etc. It worked in English but e.g. in French nobody cared and the 'French' names are still used, the same largely goes for the name of Indian cities.
If a government formally announces a name change for one of its cities and provides an English spelling for the new name then that should probably be respected, like it has been done in the example on Google Maps.
It is definitely political. In this case they're resetting the original name that was anglicised when they were colonised. Would it not be courteous to respect that?
Adapting pronunciation of foreign words is what all languages do. It's not related to colonisation at all.
Respect starts by not forcing pronunciation on foreign languages and not calling how they pronounce words "not real" (which is what you wrote in the title of your post and what I took offence with).
Edit: Bangalore is called Bengaluru in Kannada. That's about it.
> calling how they pronounce words "not real" (which is what you wrote in the title of your post and what I took offence with).
The title does not say Bangalore is not a 'real name'. That is your intepretation, presumably to justify your argument.
> Respect starts by not forcing pronunciation on foreign languages
Not forcing anything, it was posted as informational. The tone in the link or my comments is not forceful. Your own tone, however? Again, framed justification.
> Edit: Bangalore is called Bengaluru in Kannada. That's about it.
Not just Kannada, all of the above mapping services "actually" recognise Bangalore as Bengaluru. But, if you don't want to do that or take offence to a perspective that differs from yours, that is your prerogative.
I did change the title, twice, within the first few minutes to make it read more easily. Not in response to your comment, that I had not seen yet, which now appears to be more focused on nitpicking the title than what was actually posted.
Since you know so well what HN is about, you'll know that you should read the content of what is posted and not just drive-by comment based on the title. Then it should have been clear that the post had nothing to do with denying Bangalore as a "real name".
The only agenda was to inform people about something I came across that I thought was interesting. That what a lot of people still refer to as Bangalore has had it's name changed by the Indian government to Bengaluru and that people should probably start using that name.
I have to agree with you there: It's the name of a locality, nothing more. I'm German, but wouldn't expect anyone to refer to Germany as Deutschland; and Köln is called Cologne in English, no idea why that would be bad. Don't get me starterd on Trier, which once went by Augusta Treverorum...
If the country renames itself, they're free to do that. But if the international name will probably stay the same for a long while, one has to live with that, or start some campaign to make the altered name better known (mind, the intentionally used name will eventually converge with the self-choosen name).
