Sri Lankan place name etymology
While typical Sri Lankan placenames of Sinhalese origin vastly dominate, toponyms which stem from Tamil, Dutch, English, Portuguese and Arabic also exist.
In the past, the many composite or hybrid place names and the juxtaposition of Sinhala and Tamil placenames reflected the coexistence of people of both language groups.
Sinhala and Tamil favour transparent compounds involving geological features combined with an animal or plant, while the European languages are more person centered and derive place names from saints or nobility or army.
Examples for this are waduwa (carpenter), batta (lower caste settlement), ambataya (barber), aruwa (potter), goviya (farmer), bamuna (Brahmin) and Villiya (Rodiya).
[4] The place names are simple and descriptive; they reflect criteria normal to early societies and are related to the concepts and outlooks of people of those times.
[5] Land classification are Tottam (garden), Kudal (bay), Puval, Kadu (forest), Munai or Mune (front), Karai (coast) and Turai or Ture (port).
The Beira lake in Colombo probably takes its name from De Beer who is believed to have been an engineer in charge of the Dutch water defenses.
The British who followed the Dutch left many place names within the capital Colombo city, like streets, squares and quarters, but their influence on larger geographical features like towns is limited.
The quarters Fort, Cinnamon Gardens, Slave Island and Mount Lavinia carry English names, next to the native ones.
Outside of Colombo, English influence can be found in the tea planting region with the towns of Hatton and Dalhousie, and several estates such as Devon,Kenilworth, Middleton, Somerset, Usk Valley and Wavenden.
Ja-Ela, from the Javanese Canal Probably the only American Indian place name in Sri Lanka is Rappahannock, in Uda Pussellawa.
The Portuguese historian De Queyroz refers to it at 'Jafanapataõ', which he says is said by some to be a corrupted form of 'Jafana-en-Putalam', or "Town of the Lord Jafana", and by others to be derived from 'Jafana-Patanaõture' meaning "long harbour".
Additionally, some place names draw on Sanskrit or Pali roots, which are then adapted to Sinhala and Tamil phonology in different ways.
The motivation behind such analyses is not always scientific; political goals also play a role in claiming a certain area for a certain language group, see the next section for more discussion of this.
Much of the information for tracing the old place names comes from etymology, written texts, many stone inscriptions which are in Sinhala and dating back to pre-Christian times, as well as the more recent colonial records.
Sigiri graffiti verses referring to the Jaffna peninsula and written c. 8th century, contain references to Vaeligama,[10] [page needed] Kularatnam concluded from the hybrid place names that the traditionally Sinhalese North Central and North Western Provinces, as well as the coastal tracts as far as south as Colombo, were inhabited by Tamil-speaking people in the past.
According to Nissan & Stirrat, the Sri Lankan Civil War is an outcome of how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period, with the political struggle between minority Sri Lankan Tamils and the Sinhala-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place name etymologies, and the political use of the national past.
[dubious – discuss]Upon the establishment of the University of Ceylon under the Indian historian H. C. Ray, and the archeologist S. Paranavithana, these claims were re-examined by Sinhalese academics.
An issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1961,[16] examined the findings of Rasanaygam et al. and gave different interpretations.
