pune the world may agree with the bard but puneites will not when it comes to their citys name pune has been rechristened a dozen times over centuries but barring one exception the holy reference in the new names has never been skipped during the rashtrakuta dynasty the city was referred to as punnaka and punyapur while the copper plates of 758 ad and 768 ad show that the yadava dynasty had renamed it as punakavishaya and punya vishaya vishaya means land and punaka and punya mean holy noted history scholar pandurang balkawade said the city was known as kasbe pune when in the command of chhatrapati shivaji maharajs father shahaji raje bhosale it became poona in the british regime in 1857 and was last changed to pune in 1978the only exception was when mughal emperor aurangzeb renamed the city as muhiyabad sometime between 1703 and 1705 in memory of his greatgrandson muhiulmilan who died here but the name got erased soon after aurangzebs deathin his book pune nagar sanstha shatabdi grantha another noted history scholar m p mangudkar cited ancient hindu literature to say that the area along the confluence of two rivers in this case mula and mutha is considered a sacred placehistory researcher mandar lavate however asserted that pune did not grow along the confluence of the two rivers but only along the mutha and has its origin in kasba peth the city got its name from the nearby punyeshwar temple he saidbalkawade too supported this view saying that punyeshwar a shi va temple has been mentioned by sant namdev in his book alandichi panchakroshipune was also known as punyanagari punaka desha punya wadi and punawadi but balkawade and lavate say there are no documents to support these nameshowever they admitted that marathi writer n v joshi has written a book punawadi to pune