http://www.geocities.com/orthopapism/bombay.html is a good web-site on it I think, & the author here covers mroe detail. The author makes the correct links to the Shiv Sena fascists: "The city of Bombay did not exist before the English built it, moving from the Mughal concession of their Surat 'factory' (precint or compound) to the isles of Bombay which the Portuguese ceded to them as dowry for the marriage of a Portuguese princess with an English prince. The Portuguese had conquered it in 1508 A.D. from the Arab Sultanate of Gujerat. The Arabs called it 'Al Omanis'. The Portuguese renamed it as 'Bom Bahia', the 'Good Bay', in appreciation of the excellent and deep harbour that it possessed on the east side. This bay is now called the Front Bay, a name given by the English, although, it is nowadays more commonly called the Harbour. (The Gulf on the south-west they called the 'Back Bay.') The English developed Bom Bahia into Bombay. The name Mumbai on the contrary, is derived from the temple of Mumbadevi, the Goddess Mumba. It is alleged that 'Mumba' is a shortening of 'Maha-Amba,' the Great Amba, Amba being one of the more famous Hindu goddesses. However, there is no historical evidence available or offered for the claim that the name Mumbai in any form was ever attached to the territory before the advent of the English. As a matter of fact, the Arabs had destroyed all the temples on the isles, and the Portuguese did not permit their reconstruction. It was only the English who allowed the reconstruction and building of new temples. According to this history, when the English took over Bom Bahia from the Portuguese, they, in keeping with their mercantilist policy of religious toleration, permitted the Hindus to enter and settle in the isles. A Hindu woman by the name of Mumba who subsequently settled in Bombay built the Mumbadevi temple. At this time, Bombay, like the rest of the former Portuguese territories in its surroundings - the great island of Salcette, the isles of Bandra, (originally Bandorem, 'the Wharfs' and never Vandre, as the Marathi colonists claim,) Kurla, Trombay, Dharavi, Vasai (Bassein), Uran, Nhava & Sheva, etc., the ancient cities of Thane, Kalyan and Sopara, had a Christian majority, composed of the Lusitanised descendants of the original Konkani people. The new immigrants, under England's auspices, were mainly Hindu Maharashtrians, Marathi speakers. Later, in order to justify themselves, they invented a myth that "the temple is about six centuries old: Mumbaraka, a sadistic giant who frequently plundered the place at the time. Terrorized by these unwelcome visits, the locals pleaded with the god Brahma, Creator of all things to protect them. Brahma then "pulled out of his own body", an eight armed goddess who vanquished Mumbaraka. Brought to his knees, Mumbaraka implored the goddess to adopt his name and built a temple in her honour. She still stands there, an orange faced goddess on an altar strewn with marigolds: devotees believe that those who seek her divine favour are never disappointed." Given the history of the Mumbadevi temple, it is obvious that the claim that 'Mumbai' is the original name of the city of Bombay is merely mythurgic: the malicious invention of the Marathi colonists as an instrument of Cultural Genocide, by destroying the original names and replacing them with Maharashtrianised names! The renaming rests entirely on the goon power of the Marathi colonists' Brown Shirt party, the terrorist organisation that styles itself the Shiv Sena."
2) That same author talks of the potential renaming of Goa also: Sena's Great Indian recipe: Mkae Goa "Govapuri": at: http://www.geocities.com/orthopapism/govapuri.html This says: "Will Goa go the Mumbai and Kolkata way to become Govapuri or Gomantak? It is difficult to pronounce what might happen yet, but the Shiv Sena <http://www.shivsena.org> here has repeated an earlier demand that Lusitanised names of villages and towns be dropped in favour of their desi versions. ... the Shiv Sena wants to similarly obliterate the Iberian flavour of Goan names that has stuck on from 451 years of Portugal's occupation of this west coast region. But in Goa, conflicting cultural influences could throw more emotive dynamite into the Babel of names in use. Goa' simmering language and script disputes over Konkani and Marathi are likely to influence any name-changing game here. A post-liberation (1961) pro-Marathi regime Marathised erstwhile Portuguese and original Konkani pronunciations to produce hybrids that differing camps virulently dispute. The capital city of Goa, Panaji, thus named after 1961, followed the Portuguese "Pangim" (the m here being silent) which current English usage anglicised to Panjim while the Konkani "Ponjjae" is still used in vernacular conversation. Now the Shiv Sena has pointed out that the current "Old Goa," home to the World Heritage Cathedral Monuments, "Velha Goa" pre-1961, should be renamed "Brahmapuri" after an ancient Brahma temple there. Similarly, the Shiv Sena wants the port town of Vasco da Gama, named after the famous 15th century navigator, to bear the name of "Sambhajinagar," Sambhaji being the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji's son. A swathe of villages and towns in the Old Conquest regions the Portuguese occupied the longest must revert back to their old names, they suggest."
3) At: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3193/papers/india.html - there is another & perhasp more generalised interpretation. This largely agrees that these name-ing changes are closely related to the Hindvata incipient fascisation taking place in India Today: "Thus, the name Mumbai seems to be an attempt to respect the original inhabitants of the islands. But in the intervening centuries, Bombay had also become home to large numbers of Gujaratis, Gujarati Muslims, Goans, British, and Parsis, many of whom referred to it as Bombay. The particular form "Mumbai" seems to suggest that "Bombay" was a corruption of the "original" name. The change was first proposed as far back as 1982 by the municipal government.6 <http://www.hvk.org/hvk/articles/0297/0142.html> However, it was not until 1995 that the change was actually made. This was when the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party came to power in coalition with the BJP. The Shiv Sena had many policies that discriminated against non-Marathas and Muslims, and this name change seemed to be one more divisive measure. But the national government, though still controlled by the INC, approved the change readily, because of their weak standing for the upcoming elections. (They ended up losing to the BJP-led coalition anyway.)"
4) having said that - name changing with changes of guard is pertty universal isn't it? Think of Leningrad to the St Petersburg; There are a number of Inuit names that have taken out" stalwart imperial names like Resolute bay etc....... Hari