Salman Khan has grabbed the entire Indian movie industry’s attention after he called for a ban to the word ‘Bollywood’, which is used to refer to the Hindi film industry, a word which is an imitation of Hollywood used to mention the American movie industry.
Not just Bollywood, the South Indian movie industries are called Kollywood, Tollywood, Mollywood and Sandalwood, all apparently derived from Hollywood and Bollywood. Hollywood by itself has nothing to do with movies, except that Hollywood, a locality in Los Angeles, was where the early movie studios were housed.
The first mention of the word ‘wood’ with a film industry in India,was Tollywood, the Bengali film industry based in Tollygunge. After the Bombay film industry overtook its Bengali counterpart in the 70s, they too followed suit and coined the word Bollywood, which was a blend of the word Bombay and wood. The other movie industries in India followed the naming practice by coining the word with the place or language they were working with. Salman has also suggested the usage of the word Hi-Fi (Hindi Films) to denote the Hindi movie industry. Salman’s comments received an abundance of positive responses from his colleagues and fans. We believe the same call will follow in South Indian movie circles.
‘Wood’ named film industries
Bulawood: Fijian film industry
Chollywood: Peruvian film industry
Dhaliwood: Bangladeshi film industry
Hollywood North: Canadian film industry
Kariwood: Pakistani film industry
Kollywood Nepal: Nepali film industry
Nollywood: Nigerian film industry
Pollywood: Pashto language movie industry
Sollywood: Sindhi language movie industry
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