sri lankan historian karthigesu indrapala claims that "eela", the stem of "eelam", is attested in sri lanka for centuries before the common era as a name of an ethnic group, and eventually it came to be applied to the island as "eelam". he also believes that the name of the island was applied to the popular coconut tree or vice versa in tamil. he believes the early native names for the present sinhalese ethnic group, such as "hela", are derivations of "eela", which was prakritized as "sihala" and eventually sanskritized as "simhala" in the 5th century ce. yet another theory based on archeological evidence suggests the word is a tamil word which originated from south india.