185. The spatial suffix ‘ āNu’: Muddānu

We have analysed the place name “Bel (a) mannu” earlier. Bel+mannu at that point appeared perfect as land (soil-‘mannu’) of white (“Bel”) people. Besides, there are several villages having similar spatial suffixes like Kodmannu, Kemmannu, and Madmannu etc. However, a newly available string data suggests an amendment to my earlier analysis that was somewhat erroneous. The Belmannu, for example, should have been analysed as Belama+āNu (and not as Bel+maNNu).
So here we introduce the spatial indicator suffix -‘āNu’ instead of the earlier suggested -‘maNNu’.
Muddānu
The revelation surprisingly comes from the name of small hamlet known as ‘Muddānu’ (pron. muddāNu) in Inna village. Mudda+ ānu sounds similar to Belmannu, Kodamannu, Kemmannu, etc but note that the suffix is distinctly āNu and not mannu or annu. This also suggests that the presently accepted pronunciation of ‘BelamaNNu’ is a misnomer of the original word BelamāNu. Similarly the other analogous place names must have been originally KemmāNu, KodmāNu, and MadmāNu etc.
Ān, āNu
The ‘ān’ or ‘ānu’ which basically means a young male has been used as an affix possibly to denote tribes or people in general as discussed in earlier posts. An(u) prefix also occurs in the tribe/region indicator word Andhra, Ankola, etc. In the case of place names such as Akola, Akkole-guttu etc., the ‘an’ has been reduced to a (n).
So ‘Muddanu’ hamlet appears to be a fossil place name suggestive of ancient habitation of ‘Mudda’ tribes.

Peramanur
Peramanur is a village near Ullal in the southern part of Mangalore.It appears that this village was ‘PeramāNu’ to begin with like MuddāNu , KemmāNu etc and later another additional suffix ‘–ur’ was appended to make it ‘Peramanur’ or ‘Peramannur’.

Spatial suffix ‘Ne’
A variant of the spatial suffix ‘-aNu’ exists in the form of ‘-Ne ‘ (pronunciation: heavy N ) in some parts of Tulunadu. Examples are village names like ‘Marne’ (=mara+Ne), ‘Perne’ (=per+Ne), ‘Kokkarne’ (kokkar+Ne), etc. The village name ‘Pernankila’ (=per+Na+nkila), apparently an extended version of the toponym ‘PerNe’ also exists.
Note that most of the village names having '-aNu' or '-Ne' spatial suffix are ethnonyms or village names based on the name of tribes settled there in the remote past.
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