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The Sun
Denebola · β Leonis · Leo
names 14languages 14
The names
vernacular 2 · tribal 11 · borrowed 1
| Name | Language | Meaning | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heng | Central Nicobarese (Camorta) Camorta, Nancowry group, Central Nicobars | — | tribal |
| Hing | Chaura (Chowra) Chowra (Chaura) island, Nicobars | — | tribal |
| Nyaram, Dinga | Cholanaikkan the reserved forests of Nilambur, Malappuram district, Kerala | Nyaram is close to Malayalam ñāyar, which is Sunday. They are glad when the sun is overhead, feeling protected by it, and bury their dead with the head to the west, the end of life as against its beginning. | tribal |
| އިރު iru | Divehi (Mahl) the Maldives, and Minicoy (Maliku) in Lakshadweep, which speaks the same language and keeps the same calendar | Maniku glosses it 'sun, daystar' and gives the archaic form އިރަ ira at its own headword. | borrowed |
| Rengra-Balsa | Garo the Garo Hills, Assam (now Meghalaya) | Brother of the moon, and the children of Asima-Dingsima. The moon was once the brighter of the two; the sun in jealousy flung mud in his sister's face, and because she waited to complain instead of washing, their mother condemned the mud to stick there for ever. | tribal |
| Lingo, Purbaal, Bera, Vera, Din, Dinad, Suryal | Gondi Nagpur region: Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Gondia (Maharashtra), Adilabad (Telangana), Balaghat, Seoni, Mandla (Madhya Pradesh) | Names for the Sun and the Moon were given in 11 of the 15 villages (Table 6, p. 40) — the sixth most widely held item in the survey. The paper records no Gond knowledge of solar eclipses. | tribal |
| Diya Gomez | Korku Melghat, Amravati district, Maharashtra, and adjoining Betul and Khandwa districts, Madhya Pradesh | 'the god of the day' | tribal |
| Dan / Dado | Lambadi (Banjara) Banjara tandas of Vidarbha, Maharashtra (villages in the Nagpur–Amravati–Yavatmal region) | — | tribal |
| ഞാററുതല ñāṟṟutala | Malayalam Kerala (Malabar, Cochin, Travancore) | 'the head/beginning of the ñāṟṟu' — ñāṟṟu being both 'rice seedling' and the sun's station The Kerala farming calendar: the solar year is divided into stretches during which the sun stands in one asterism, each stretch named after that asterism and each carrying its own agricultural prescription. Gundert's worked example is തിരുവാതിരഞാററുതല, the Ārdrā period at the start of Mithunam (mid-June), 'best time for planting' — the onset of the south-west monsoon. | vernacular |
| Chand, Dadaji, Wado | Pardhi fourteen Pardhi villages of the Amravati and Yeotmal districts, Vidarbha, Maharashtra, surveyed 2016-2018 | 'grandfather'; 'the big one' Recorded in all fourteen villages. | tribal |
| zengokesü (A, Tsetninyu group); ani khowu (B); amuthe kecha (C) | Rengma Naga the Rengma country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland), and the Mikir Hills | 'sun circle' (B); 'round circle' (C) It is believed to occur when great men die. In the Tsetninyu group the same word is used for the rainbow. | tribal |
| sin ipil | Santali Santal Parganas, Jharkhand / adjoining Bengal and Odisha | sun-star, day-star | tribal |
| tsükinhye | Sema (Sumi) Naga the Sema country, Naga Hills (now Nagaland) | possibly 'eye of heaven's house' The sun and moon are invoked in the most solemn asseverations and cannot be falsely called on with impunity. | tribal |
| ప్రొద్దురిక్క proddu-rikka | Telugu Telugu country (Madras Presidency: Coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Telangana) | the sun star The month Phālguna is named from it in the same vernacular shape: proddu-rikka-nela. | vernacular |
Sources
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare, S.A. Awaradi and Kishore Menon, 'In situ studies of astronomy of the Nicobarese tribe of Nicobar Islands', Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, 6, 1014-1039 (2018), Table 3, pp. 1026-1027 link
- M. N. Vahia, V. S. Ramachandran, Jayant Gangopadhyay and Justin Joseph, 'Astronomy of Cholanaikkan tribe of Kerala', arXiv:1702.04149 (2017), §9 'Their astronomy', p. 7 link
- Hassan Ahmed Maniku, A Concise Etymological Vocabulary of Dhivehi Language, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, Special Volume XLIV (Colombo, 2000), s.v. iru, p. 126 link
- Major A. Playfair, The Garos (London: David Nutt, 1909), p. 85 link
- Vahia & Halkare, 'Aspects of Gond Astronomy', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 16(1), 29-44 (2013); preprint arXiv:1306.2416, Table 5 row 1, p. 39 link
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare and Purushottam Dahedar, 'Astronomy of the Korku tribe of India', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 19(2), 216-232 (2016), Table 2, p. 221 link
- M.N. Vahia, Ganesh Halkare, Kishore Menon and Harini Calamur, 'The astronomy of two Indian tribes: the Banjaras and the Kolams', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 17(1), 65-84 (2014), Table 1, p. 69 link
- Gundert, A Malayalam and English Dictionary (1872), s.v. ഞാറു ñāṟu, p. 412; and s.v. തല tala, p. 436 link
- Ganesh Halkare, Purushottam Dahedar, Wayne Orchiston and M.N. Vahia, 'Astronomy of the Pardhi tribe of central India', Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 22(1), 179-194 (2019), Table 5, pp. 184-185 link
- J.P. Mills, The Rengma Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1937), p. 245 link
- Bodding, A Santal Dictionary, vol. V (1936), s.v. sin ipil, p. 284 link
- J.H. Hutton, The Sema Nagas (London: Macmillan, 1921), p. 250 link
- Brown, C. P., A Telugu-English Dictionary, new ed., thoroughly revised and brought up to date (Madras: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1903), s.v. ప్రొద్దు proddu, p. 856 link