Which came first — Madras or Chennai?

Like most others in the city, I had a very vague idea of the chronology of the names Madras and Chennai, and this year, during August determined that I would get a clear grip on the sequence in which they were first mentioned. At the end of it, I must say I am older, and wiser. And so, here goes.

Madraspatnam is the name that first appears. This is in Venkatadri Nayak’s land grant of 1639. The English translation of this document, reproduced in H.D. Love’s Vestiges of Old Madras, records the arrival of the British at “our port of Medraspatam,” thereby indicating that there was a village/settlement of that name predating 1639 and what was more, it was a port. Patnam itself is a suffix used only for seaside towns anyway.

In 1645, the grant for the same land was obtained from the ruler – Raja Sriranga Raya who had his capital at Chandragiri and whose representative the Nayak really was. This claims the British have arrived at “Zera Renga Rayapatam, my towne” and there built a fort. This seems to imply that alongside Madraspatnam, a new fort was built (Fort St. George), which the poor deluded Raja seems to have imagined was named after him. In addition, the grant assigns to the British the rents of the ground about the village of Madraspatam and in addition a place called the Jackal’s Ground which has been later translated as Narimedu and which name has been assigned to land where the General Hospital and the old MMC campus stand.

So far, there is no mention of Chennapatnam. H.D. Love surmises that this was the name of the land on which Fort St. George came to be built. We do know that Madras was to the north of this, and it was in 1673 defined as “the Indian town with flat houses,” meaning the Old Black Town that stood to the north of the Fort. So far so good – Chennapatnam was the fort, and Madraspatnam the village to its north.

The confusion begins with 1646 when the gunpowder maker Nagabattan makes a donation to the Chennakesava Perumal Temple, which he says is in Chennapattanam. The temple was in Old Black Town, north of the Fort, where the High Court now stands. A subsequent donation, in 1648, by Beri Thimmappa, the Dubash also has it that the temple was in Chennapattanam. He should have known, for it was he who built it.

By 1672, a fresh grant was needed, this time from the new power, namely Golconda.

Neknam Khan’s grant was given that year and it clearly demarcated the “Fort and Town of Chinapatam” and distinguished it from the “Place called Madrassapatam”. We can see that even here, the Fort was considered to be in Chennapatnam, with now Black Town added to it.

In 1802 C.V. Boria, the epigraphist to Col. Colin Mackenzie unearthed a Maratha manuscript that stood many of the early theories on their head. As per this, the town had four distinct parts – Madras Coopom on which the British built their fort, Chennaik Coopom on which stand the villages of Muthialpet and Pagdalpet (New Black or George Town), Arkoopom, said to be where the Cooum meets the sea and Maleput, later surmised to be near Salt Cotaurs.

In short, by 1802, a Marathi manuscript reversed history. The fort became Madras and the town Chennai. And this is still faithfully trotted out — Madras was English while Chennai became Tamil (it could have well been Telugu) and it became a convenient reason to rename the city.

V. Sriram is a writer and historian