posted January 27, 2005 09:21 AM         
Many Tamils in NE are actually Sinhalese, only difference is they speak Tamil. Few centuries ago, they visited ThamilNadu and falling love with the Tamil culture. They learned to speak Tamil. To help communicate with their Tamil friends when they returned, they added ‘m’ at the end of their names since the Tamil alphabet does not allow native Tamils to correctly say Balasinghe or Rajasinghe.

When my friend returned to Sri Lanka from USA, he changed his last name to Clinton. He says he wants to change his last name to Clintom and live in Jaffna.

posted January 27, 2005 03:40 PM         
Terminator

So what you are saying is that in fact Mr. Anton balasinghem has Singhalese roots. Interesting! To my knowledge these surnames only exist in Sri Lanka and your explanation is very much logical.

posted January 28, 2005 11:08 AM         
I am not against Sinhala roots. Before 6th Century, there was no sinhala language. Sinhala language was developed of mix of Ariyan language, pali and other Driviadan languages such as Tamil and Kanadam etc,
Obiviusly,In earlier time, Some percentage oftamils became sinhalese and some percentage of tamils had intermarrige with sinhalese, and became sinhalese.
No surprise that sinhalese have surnames as tamil names. Sinhala roots were mix of tamils , Drividans and Vijian or(Vija) and his friends if Mahavamsa was true.

[This message has been edited by Drwho1 (edited January 28, 2005).]