44 



ON THE NAMES OF 



tlie errors or idiosyncrasies of the writer instead of perpetu- 

 ating them, especially if he had possessed lists for reference, 

 such as is here offered, only properly completed and corrected. 

 The Government has now determined to adopt a system, and 

 if it will adhere to it and carry it out consistently in all official 

 publications and departments, the coming generation will fall 

 into the way of it insensibly and with greater ease (?) than the 

 present and past generations have enjoyed in acquiring the 

 unsystematic practice hitherto current, so that we may now 

 hope that the literature of the future will be free from the 

 blunders and irregularities that now disgrace that of the past 

 and so puzzle the new-comer and the foreigner. An attempt 

 has been made in this paper to carry out the approved system 

 of transliteration, but the first gazette of the Madras Grovern- 

 ment on the subject (dated 20th August 1878) was so 

 lamentably defective that its application to Tamil names was 

 very uncertain, and even the amended publication in a new and 

 revised gazette leaves much to be desired. - 



Besides obtaining the correct form of each name and so 

 helping to improve our maps, I thought that such a list as 

 this might prove of some use to the gazetteer (compiler) and 

 historical writer, and of interest to the traveller, the ethnolo- 

 gical inquirer, the ordinary reader and writer, and most of 

 all to the mapmaker ; also to any one else curious in such 

 matters, as throwing light on the history and circumstances 

 of the inhabitants, on the physical features of the country 

 they dwell in, the language they speak, and the race they 

 belong to. 



All proper names were, or were originally derived from, 

 words or sounds having a meaning ; but process of time and 

 the long continued wear and tear of familiar use have 

 rubbed off the corners that were rough to the tongue, and 

 have run together the liquid parts that most easily coalesced, 

 With the original form the meaning has also been lost, 



