The appended -amma marks her status as the figurative mother of the Sankethi people, who led them out of Sengottai after mistreatment at the hands of the local Brahmin orthodoxy.
Keshaviah refers to her as "... a solitary Brahmana woman leading some 700 or 800 Brahman families from what was their home from time immemorial ...".
There is also evidence, according to an inscription preserved in a museum in Shimoga, that the Sankethi community received a land grant from the king of Vijayanagara in 1524 from Krishnadevaraya in recognition of Vedic scholarship.
The more conservative members of the community were strongly against their sons leaving India for study, citing prohibitions against Brahmins travelling by sea.
B. K. Narayana Rao sought to study medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in London and ignored the elders' objections.
For example, shavige, a popular Sankethi dish is highly similar to idiyappam from Kerala, but is often flavoured like sevai from Tamil Nadu.