Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Etymology of Kerala

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Etymology of Kerala

    Courtesy:Sri.PK.Ramakrishnan


    In ancient days there were three tamil speaking kingdoms. These were cheram, cholam and
    pandyam. In the chera region Parasurama brought the Kannada speaking Brahmins from
    Karnataka. They are today known as namputhiris. In Kannada the word for a house is
    Mana. The Namputhiris also call their houses Mana.


    In Kannada language cha of Tamil becomes ka. Example chevi > kevi.
    chempu > kempu. chemmannu > kemmannu. Likewise cheram became keram.


    Later the name of the most important produce of keram was being called keram namely
    the coconut. The name for this in Tamil is thenkay which in Malayalam is thenka or thenga.
    Later the region which has abundance of keram became Keralam. In Sanskrit la is added
    to a word to indicate abundance. tundila, jatila etc are examples in Sanskrit. So la was
    added to kera to become kerala meaning having abundanceof kera.
Working...
X