Meaning of Venkita

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

I would rather consider it as a compound of DEDR 5517 vE 'to be hot' and  
DEDR 1438 kaTam 'forest; hard difficult path in a barren tract'.
 
The Tiruppati hills are in the midst of the relatively dry region extending  
from northern Tamil Nadu into Andhra Pradesh. While the Tiruppati hills might  
have been forested, the nearby areas and paths were dry and hot. So  one 
finds vEGkaTam mentioned in Classical Tamil poems in the pAlai (dry  landscape) 
poems. For example akanAn2URu 265 by mAmUlan2Ar. 
 
Regards
Palaniappan
 
 
In a message dated 4/25/2006 10:32:47 A.M. Central Standard Time,  
srangan at YORKU.CA writes:

Isn't it  "Venkata"? I know that the diminuative is "Venki" but I don't think 
the
"i"  is found in the full word in Tamil or other Dravidian languages.

M.M.  Williams has an entry on the word (p.1014). According to it, it is the  
name
of the hill that the famous Tiripati temple sits on (thus,  Venkatesvara is 
the
lord of that hill). It also says it's derived from the  Prakrit "vyan.kat.a".

Best,
Shyam  Ranganathan