From the Bhakti List Archives
Mani Varadarajan
• Thu Sep 04 1997 - 10:42:30 PDT
Re: bAlAji
I have learned on good authority that in the "vaDa-dESam", i.e.,
North India, "bAlA" was a name that some devotees called Krishna.
Naturally, adding the honorific, this became "bAlAji".
In South India, the name has unfortunately been reverse
engineered so much that some think that Tirupati Srinivasar
actually represents a female personage! (bAlA = girl in Sanskrit)
Mani