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konāmo

sandhi contraction (interrogative)

1. of what name? called what?

Built from

• ko — root · who, what
  Interrogative pronoun; cognate with English who, Latin quī, Sanskrit kaḥ. Asks for identity or specification.
• nāmo — stem · name
  Nominative singular of nāman (name); cognate with English name, Latin nōmen, Sanskrit nāman. The -o ending marks nominative singular in the sandhi form.

Analysis. ko (interrogative pronoun 'who, what') + nāmo (nominative singular of nāman 'name'). The final -o of ko assimilates before the initial n- of nāmo, creating the contraction konāmo; the phrase is used as an attributive interrogative meaning 'what name?' or 'what is called?'

Etymology. ko derives from PIE *kwo- (cognate with English who, Latin quī); nāmo from PIE *h₃neh₃-men- (cognate with English name, Latin nōmen, Sanskrit nāman). The interrogative ko regularly contracts with following vowel-initial words in sandhi.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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