WHY SRI LANKA?
The old name “Ceylon” suited me just fine. Why did they have to change it to “Sri Lanka”?
There has been some talk about conspiracies in recent years and I think one might exist in this field of nation-name-changing. Someone out there be they on the Right. On the left, at the Center or Vertical, for that matter, in politics out to make me and my generation appear to be dumber, we have appeared to have been dumber, on occasion, than we are.
Sri Lanka is a nice name. It is from the Sanskrit language and it means “beautiful land” which is about as trite as you can get in naming a country. Just about all nations must have been called “beautiful” land, place, spot, swamp or hillside at one time or another. Anyone finding a new place in which he might live will think of it as being the most beautiful spot in the entire world, until he moves in and finds out what the tax bill is going to be.
For the old name of “Ceylon” always meant good, high quality tea and fine cinnamon. It was changed to Sri Lanka in 1972, and has had several other names down though the centuries. Among those those names, for a short time, the island about the size of our State of West Virginia, was called “Serendipia”. We get our mysterious word “serendipity” from that name and certainlky this island was a treasure with a topicl setting an d yetwith mountains reaching up as high as 2700 feet in the south central portion..
Serendipity is the art of the act of finding a treasure when you are not looking for it. The small island was indeed a treasure in many ways to early settlers there and worthy of the mysterious term. Very little is known of the remnant of aborigines (Vedda) who inhabited the island prior on the coming of tribal groups from Northern India and, later, the Portuguese, Dutch and British.
independence was won in 1948. For the past two decades the predominant group the Sinhala (74%) has been opposed by y seperatist group in the south called the Tamil Kingdom. In 2001, Norway .
