Place Names Wallah is a compelling online platform dedicated to the origins, meanings, and stories behind place names in India and Sri Lanka. Created and curated by Geoff Ells, the site serves as a rich resource for anyone fascinated by toponymy in South Asia.
🔎 What You’ll Find on the Site
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State-level overviews such as Kerala, Rajasthan, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, and more. Each page dives into the etymology of the region’s name, key towns or districts, and contextual cultural insights.
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A breakdown of common place-name elements (e.g., pura, giri, nagar) prevalent across South Asian toponyms.
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Urban and coastal entries - like Unawatuna in Sri Lanka - breaking down local meanings (e.g. “Bamboo Port”) through accessible storytelling.
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A “Languages” page summarizing the linguistic diversity of the region: 22 official languages and a staggering ~20,000 dialects, evidencing the complexity behind naming patterns.
🧭 Why It’s Valuable
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Cross-disciplinary appeal: Geographers, linguists, historians, travelers, and educators can all discover fascinating connections between names and culture.
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Rich, concise content: Each region’s page is structured clearly—showcasing etymology, a map, and notable name-elements—perfect for both quick lookup and deeper research.
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Open-access ethos: The platform’s Substack format allows anyone to explore and share this knowledge freely.
🏷 Why Onomastic Enthusiasts Should Explore It
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It exemplifies onomastic methodology: tracing toponyms through linguistic roots, migration histories, and cultural significance.
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It highlights how onomic systems (the structured naming patterns in languages) function in multilingual settings - through layers of Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu, and local vernaculars.
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It reinforces the power of names as markers of identity, heritage, and geography - from state names like Bihar (historic Buddhist center) to local towns like Unawatuna (“bamboo port”).
💡 Get Started
Check out key pages for your favorite Indian states or Sri Lankan locations - or explore the roots of familiar names from your travels. This site is ideal for quick discovery or for integrating place-name case studies into your teaching, writing, or research.
If you’d like, I can help extract content for workshops, classroom presentations, or a deeper onomastics reading list. Let me know!
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