Sunday, October 17, 2010

Town Hall is "Dewan Bandaran Ipoh"

For so many years, we used to call this heritage building in Old Town as Ipoh Town Hall but there were confusions where some call it "City Hall" which may be misunderstood as the city council. The confusion also happen in Bahasa Malaysia where some people call it "Dewan Bandaraya Ipoh", but this name, again may refers to the city council (in official, the city council is called Majlis Bandaraya Ipoh). I think the city council realizes this phenomena and it has taken some actions to put up the official name on the relevant buildings. Earlier the city council administrative center in Greentown is fixed with the wording sign "Majlis Bandaraya Ipoh" on its roof (as published in 8-March-2010). Today when I drive through Town Hall, I find it is also fixed with its official name "Dewan Bandaran Ipoh". Hopefully it will eliminate the confusions & guiding Ipoh citizens to use the correct name of these buildings.

4 comments:

  1. This is one confusing topic... why is our Majlis Bandaraya Ipoh not redesignated as Dewan Bandaraya Ipoh since Ipoh had been accorded City status. Note that the DBKL no longer uses Majlis..as they use to before being accorded city status... as shown here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewan_Bandaraya_Kuala_Lumpur

    And now they when they change the designation of the heritage building to Dewan Bandaran Ipoh does it mean that their english equivalent is now Ipoh Municipal Hall (Which somehow does not reflect the city status of the hall) ...hahahah!!! i reckon they may be changing the name some time later...

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  2. I thought it should be more appropriately name as "Dewan Bandar Ipoh" to avoid confusion with the municipality thing when they call it Bandaran.

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  3. Oh, i notice your concern. In fact municipal council in Malaysia is normally called "majlis perbandaran" which Ipoh used to have (that time was MPI, Majlis Perbandaran Ipoh). After granted city status in 1988, it has been changed to "Majlis Bandaraya Ipoh" MBI. As to mention Dewan Bandaraya, if not mistaken, KL is the only city using "Dewan" whereby others, such as JB, Shah Alam, Kuching, KK, are all using "Majlis". I believe "Majlis" is suitable for the administrative body while "Dewan" is just nice for this civic hall. Anyway, i have no comment on "Dewan Bandar" or "Dewan Bandaran", may be this is to suit the Bahasa Malaysia's grammar. But i find to pronounce "Dewan Bandaran Ipoh" is better than "Dewan Bandar Ipoh"...haha

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    Replies
    1. Kuching is Dewan Bandaraya Kuching. I remember after MPI, we did call it DBI when it just became a city. Then, suddenly it became MBI, as if naming it DBI was a mistake & 'they' quickly cover it up. Do a search & it's very hard to find that ipoh was ever named DBI. But there are hard evidence bcoz I've seen some old manholes with the emblem DBI.

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