remember my name

Sri Lanka...... I am copying this verbatim from one of our travel guide books - I found it so fascinating and well written - I thought I would share it with you.....

Source: Insight guides - Sri Lanka

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Remember my Name

Sri Lanka's many name changes

over the centuries are a

reflection of it's fascinating history

The Island currently going by the name of Sri Lanka has had a string of other identities and has been know under a range of nicknames and pseudonyms. To Prince Vijaya and the founding fathers it was, in their Sanskritic language "Tambapanni" after copper colored beach on which they landed. In the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, a sea captain working for Annius Plocamus a tax collector in the Red Sea, suffered the misfortune of catching a monsoon that swept his boat off course and dumped him on the island 15 days later. For him, and other Roman /Greek caller, Tambapanni was too much of a mouthful thus it became "Taprobane" The geographer Ptolemy rang a slight change by showing it as Taprobanam on his famous 2nd century AD map.

Arab traders could have told Annus Plocamus's captain that if he waited a while a different monsoon would blow him back to Arabia or East Africa. they relied on these winds to go back and for the to the island they knew as "SERENDIB". This name is a corruption of the Sanskrit Sinhaladvipa. Cosomas Indicopleustes(byzantine author) twisted the Arabic into "Sieslediba" but the 18th century English novelist Horace Walpole stuck to the original for his fairy tale "The 3 Princes of Serendib" and used it to coin "serendipity" meaning happy discovery by accident!!! (anna speaking: who would have ever known that's where that phase came from!!) another variant Sirinduil, as yet awaits a neologist to dive definition to "sirinuility".

Edward Barbosa, a Portuguese captain who visited in 1515, tried to persuade his countrymen to adopt Tennaserim, which in some ancient Indian language meant "land of delights" but htye had already settled on CELAO, which had started as the Chinese Si-Lan and thanks to medival Europeans like Marco Polo, became SEYLAN. The dutch worked out their own derivation to produce Zeilan; the English compromise was CEYLON. (anna speaking...think tea...)

Through all of this, the Sinhalese had long ago decided it was LANKA, and it officially changed to SRI LANKA in 1972 (the prefix means "holy" or "beautiful") The words Prajathanthrika Samajavadi Janarajayi (Democratic Socialist Republic) were tacked in in 1978. The trick with these tongue twisters is to try and pronounce everything, but the complications of long and short vowels and aspirated and retroflex constants, will help you trip up. Your mispronunciation will no doubt be forgiven; Sri Lankans are used to people getting their name wrong.

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Did you count how many names the name changed??? 14!!! Holy Crow! That about sums up my entire time in Sri Lanka....(I only speak for myself - I was awe struck - in both good and bad ways) I was in serious culture shock the day we landed - but I grew accustomed by the time we left to the everyday goings on... and I was... yes... I was mistaken for a Sri Lankan several times on the trip. (go figure) The whole experience helped me to appreciate the country and the people, in addition too, everything Sri Lanka has been through and the current state of development. It was a fascinating place to visit, not sure I would recommend it as a Travel destination to just anyone. You need to be a certain type of person to take in it's beauty and culture and one needs to have lots and lots of time to try an figure out to navigate about the country, if your travel desires more than just one or two places to see there. There is much to see in Sri Lanka, we only touched the tip of the iceberg - or jungle... We did cover ground and it was not an easy feat... below is an example of the typical road.....

a place that looks like somewhere you want to go ....might be 2 hours away (on the map) but it is really 8 hours away.... (on this road)

because this could be the typical traffic jam......

You just never know what can happen. I will be back with several post about the places we visited....

for now.....

Ayubowan (long life in sinhalese - the language of Sri Lankans)

amt