How Sri Lanka got its names: Lanka, Serendib, Ceylon and more

About How Sri Lanka got its names: Lanka, Serendib, Ceylon and more

By the ULTIMATE Sri Lanka Editorial Team

Site Editor: Tara de la Motte

Few places have been called by so many names. Each one tells you who was sailing past, and what they came for.

Lanka

Lanka is the oldest name of all, found in ancient Sanskrit texts, including the Ramayana, and still the everyday name for the island today.

Taprobane

Classical Greek and Roman geographers knew the island as Taprobane, and drew it on their maps, often far too large, as a fabled land of gems and elephants.

The English word “serendipity” comes from an old name for Sri Lanka, by way of a fairy tale.

Serendib and “serendipity”

Persian and Arab sailors called the island Serendib (or Sarandib). In 1754 the English writer Horace Walpole coined the word “serendipity”, inspired by a Persian fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip”, whose heroes were always making happy discoveries by accident. So every lucky find in English carries an old name of Sri Lanka.

Ceylon

The Portuguese called the island Ceilão, which became Ceylon in English. It was the name of the colony and of the country after independence until 1972, and it lives on in Ceylon tea and Ceylon cinnamon.

Sri Lanka

In 1972 the country took the name Sri Lanka: “Sri” is an honorific meaning resplendent or venerable, so the name is often translated as “the resplendent island”.

The teardrop

Look at a map and the island hangs like a teardrop, or a pear, below the tip of India, across the Palk Strait, a narrow stretch of sea roughly 50–80 km wide. Hence the nickname “the teardrop of India”.

The pearl

Its other nickname, “the pearl of the Indian Ocean”, is a tribute to its beauty, its wildlife and its riches: an island famous for its sapphires and other gems, its spices and its tea.

Our advice: next time you stumble on something wonderful by chance, call it serendipity, and remember that the word started its journey in Sri Lanka.

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