Ramzan vs Ramadan: The linguistic battle that divides India every Eid

Every year, when the crescent moon of the holy month is sighted, social media and WhatsApp groups are filled with greetings of ‘Ramzan Mubarak’ or ‘Happy Ramzan’. A few also read Ramadan Mubarak! And here’s when the age-old debate starts - is it Ramadan or Ramzan? The question divides people every single year. While public figures like Gauhar Khan and Shashi Tharoor have commented about it online, many also find themselves debating it with friends at home. And if you are a Lucknowite, you are sure to be corrected with, ‘Ramzan hota hai Ramadan nahi!’. So what’s in a name, we ask. With historians and linguistic content creators jumping in through reels and memes pulling people to one side or the other, this is more than just a spelling debate. It is a window into how history, migration and globalisation have quietly shaped the way we speak.Ramzan became Ramadan for us mostly due to social mediaAbbas Nayyar, Head of the Urdu Department at Lucknow University, explains that the variation has its roots in pronunciation. “We grew up hearing Ramzan in our homes, neighbourhoods and everyday conversations. But the word Ramadan has entered our vocabulary more recently, largely because globalisation and social media has made the world smaller.” Nayyar explains, “In Arabic, the word is Ramadan because the letter Z is not there in it. Hence they pronounce it with a D and not Z as we do. As the word travelled from Arabia to Persia and then to South Asia, languages adapted it to their own phonetic systems, and that’s how Ramadan gradually became Ramzan in Persian and later in Urdu, which we primarily speak in India. The right pronunciation was, is, and will always be Ramzan for us. However, it would not be correct to dismiss people who say Ramadan either, as they are are simply working within the limits of their phonetic tradition. So language-wise they are both right, just that we are more used to the Urdu way of saying Ramzan,” he says.Sharing examples from the Indian colloquial languages, he says such changes are common when words move between languages across regions. “Every language has sounds it can and cannot produce. For example, in Bengal, rasgulla becomes roshogulla and Ramzan is pronounced Romjan. Languages naturally adjust sounds according to what is easier for speakers,” explains Nayyar.Both are right. In the context of Urdu, it is Ramzan, while Ramadan is Arabic. Just because we speak Urdu more, it is Ramzan for us – Javed Akhtar, Poet and lyricistIn our stories and shayari it’s RamzanUmair Shah (@sikkawala), a Delhi-based heritage storyteller and creator, whose reel on the Ramzan versus Ramadan debate went viral on Instagram last year, opens his video with a line that immediately caught viewers’ attention: “Hamari kahaniyon mein, hamari shayari mein, jab Ramzan hai, toh Ramadan ka chand kaise accha lagega?” Speaking about the intention behind making the video, he says, “The line came from a thought I had been reflecting on for some time. Since childhood, we have been saying Ramzan, and suddenly, while growing up, we started calling it Ramadan. That made me create a reel explaining the difference between the two. The reel drew numerous responses in the comments section, with several users writing ‘Thank you for explaining this’ and ‘Thank you for debunking the confusion,” says the content creator. He further adds, “The reaction to the reel was as if many people felt the same way about both Ramzan and Ramadan, but they just needed someone to say it out loud,” he says.