If you are planning a trip and have started to notice the word Keralam appearing alongside Kerala, you are not imagining it. The state has officially adopted Keralam as its name in English, aligning the spelling with how the word has always been spoken in Malayalam. Both versions remain understood, and either is fine in conversation. But Keralam is now the official form.
The shorter answer to “which is right?” is: both are right, and Keralam is now preferred. The longer answer is more interesting, because the story of the name reaches back two thousand years.
Here is the short version of how it came to be.
Where the name comes from
There is no single agreed origin for Keralam. Linguists and historians offer two main theories, and both are probably partly true.
The first connects the name to the Chera dynasty, one of the three great Tamil kingdoms that ruled South India from around the third century BCE. The Cheras controlled the western coast, the strip between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. Over centuries of linguistic change, Cheralam, the land of the Cheras, may have shifted into Keralam. Place names move slowly with the tongue.
The second is the explanation most Keralans grew up with, and the one we usually share with travellers. Kera is the Malayalam word for coconut, alam means land. Keralam, the land of coconuts. It is beautifully simple and, when you have spent any time on the backwaters or in a coastal village, intuitively right. The coconut palm is everywhere. It feeds, shelters, lights, ropes and oils the place. The fact that the etymology may be folk-derived rather than strictly historical does not make it less true to how this land actually feels.
The first written reference, two thousand years ago
The earliest surviving written reference to this region appears in Emperor Ashoka’s Rock Edict XIII, carved in the third century BCE.
After the Kalinga War, Ashoka renounced conquest and turned to Buddhism. In one of his major edicts, he lists the southern kingdoms beyond his empire’s reach, the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Satiyaputras, and the Keralaputras. The suffix means “sons of,” and Keralaputra is generally interpreted as referring to the Chera ruling lineage of the western coast.
Whatever exactly Ashoka meant by it, one thing is clear. The root Kerala was already in use 2,300 years ago. The name is not a modern invention. It is older than most of the political boundaries on a map of the world today.
Why the Constitution wrote it as “Kerala”
When India reorganised its states along linguistic lines in 1956, Malayalam speakers got their unified state. But the official English name became “Kerala,” not “Keralam.”
The reason is colonial. British administrators in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries wrote Indian place names phonetically in English, often dropping suffixes that did not feel natural to the English ear. Keralam became Kerala in English the same way Mumbai became Bombay, Chennai became Madras, Bengaluru became Bangalore and Kolkata became Calcutta. By the time the Constitution of India was drafted, “Kerala” was the established English form, and the framers used it.
Malayalam speakers, of course, kept saying Keralam. The disconnect was only in writing, only in English, and only outside the state.
What the 2026 change actually does
The recent change is straightforward. It aligns the official English spelling with how the name has always been spoken in Malayalam. It is the same correction Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru made before it.
It is not a renaming. It is not a political statement. It is a spelling.
What about the people, then?
Here it gets interesting. Even with the official name change, the people of this land do not call themselves Keralites or Keralamites.
We call ourselves Malayalis.
One version says, the word comes from mala, meaning mountain, and alam, meaning land. Malayali, the people of the mountain land. Another version would be Malayalis are people who speak Malayalam – the common version. Unlike Kerala or Keralam, which name a place, Malayali names an identity, defined not by borders but by a shared language and culture. A Malayali in Dubai or Toronto or London is still a Malayali. The term travels.
Kerala the place. Keralam the place, more correctly spelled. Malayali the person. Malayalam the language. All four words come from the same land.
So what should a traveller say?
Either is fine. Locals will understand both, and most will not particularly notice which you use. Keralam is more accurate and is now the official form, so if you are writing about your trip or speaking to someone who cares about the distinction, lean toward Keralam. If you are speaking casually, Kerala still works.
What people will notice and appreciate is when you ask about the name. The story of how a place came to be called what it is is rarely told, and the curiosity does more than the pronunciation does.
If you want to take it a little further, learn the basics. Namaskaram is hello. Nanni is thank you. Sukhamano means “are you well?”. A Malayali greeted in their own language smiles in a particular way.
A name that was always here
The shift from Kerala to Keralam is less a change than a return. The name was always here, in the speech of Malayalis for centuries, in Sanskrit and Tamil texts for two thousand years, in Ashoka’s rock edicts in the third century BCE. The Constitution formalised a state. The recent change has formalised the name. The land itself, the coconut palms, the monsoon rains, the spice-scented mountains and the long backwater coast, has been here much, much longer.
Sometimes history doesn’t change. It just returns to its own pronunciation.
Planning a journey to Keralam? See our Kerala destination pages or get in touch to plan a trip with us.