Varanasi and Kashi: are they the same place?

Yes — but the fact that the question gets asked so often is more revealing than the answer itself. Varanasi, Kashi, and Banaras are three names for the same city on the Ganges, and all three are still in active daily use, which is unusual. Most Indian cities that were renamed have settled on one name in ordinary speech, with the older ones surviving mainly in historical texts. Varanasi never fully did that.

Three names, three registers

Kashi is the oldest of the three and the one most tied to religious and literary identity — "the luminous city," used in scripture, in the names of institutions like Banaras Hindu University's older references, and in everyday religious speech, where "going to Kashi" carries weight that "going to Varanasi" doesn't quite have. Banaras is the vernacular, colloquial form — the name locals use walking through the ghats and lanes, closer to how the city actually sounds in conversation. Varanasi is the modern administrative name, derived from the Varuna and Assi rivers that historically bounded the old city, and it's the one that shows up on official documents, train tickets, and maps.

Why none of the three won outright

That three-way split has held for so long because each name is doing a different job, not competing for the same one. A pilgrim doesn't stop calling it Kashi just because the railway station says Varanasi Junction. A resident doesn't stop saying Banaras just because government letterheads use the formal name. Layer enough centuries of continuous religious, administrative, and everyday use on top of each other and you get exactly this outcome — not one name replacing the others, but three names each anchored in a different context that never had a reason to converge.

What that means for how the city gets found

For a place this old, that's not an inconsistency to resolve. It's the most accurate available description of how the city actually works — one entity, three names, each one correct depending on who's asking and why.