Bollywood Main Aishwarya Rai Amisha Patel Deepika Padukone Dia Mirza Esha Deol Genelia D’Souza Hrithik Roshan Juhi Chawla Kajol Mukherjee Karisma Kapoor Kashmira Shah Katrina Kaif Madhuri Dixit Mallika Sherawat Mahima Chaudary Manisha Koirala Meera Nirma Priyanka Chopra Rani Mukherjee Sushmita Sen Tabu Urmila Matondkar Yasmeen Ghauri
The name “Bollywood” is derived from Bombay (the former name for Mumbai) and Hollywood, the center of the American film industry. However, unlike Hollywood, Bollywood does not exist as a physical place. Though some deplore the name, arguing that it makes the industry look like a poor cousin to Hollywood, it has its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The term “Bollywood” has origins in the 1970s, when India overtook America as the world’s largest film producer. Credit for the term has been claimed by several different people, including the lyricist, filmmaker and scholar Amit Khanna, and the journalist Bevinda Collaco.
The naming scheme for “Bollywood” was inspired by “Tollywood”, the name that was used to refer to the cinema of West Bengal. Dating back to 1932, “Tollywood” was the earliest Hollywood-inspired name, referring to the Bengali film industry based in Tollygunge, whose name is reminiscent of “Hollywood” and was the center of the cinema of India at the time.
