From the Bhakti List Archives
Mani Varadarajan
• Fri Jul 24 1998 - 14:25:20 PDT
I was browsing the archives and came upon an
article written last year by Sri T.S. Sundararajan:
'kOdai' and 'gOdA'
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'kOdai' was the first name periyAzhvAr gave to ANDAL.
This Tamil word stands for 'a string of flowers'. In
the golden quadrangle of tirukkuRunkuDi, vAnamAmalai,
AzhvAr-tirunagari and SrIvilliputtUr, girl-children
were commonly named 'mAlA-nAcchiyAr'. When the Tamil
name was Sanskritised as 'gOdA', it yielded a rainbow
of meanings. In Sanskrit, the root 'gAuh' means,
inter alia, the 'vEdam'; hence, 'gOdA' signifies one
who gives of the 'vEdam'.
The full text of the article is:
http://thondar.busi.utc.edu/bhakti/archives/aug97/0002.html
aDiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan
Mani