What do 'Malayali' and 'Bengali' have in common?

This (much delayed) post is not about fish and/or communism and/or 'arty' movies. My proposed answer to the above question is: 'Tamil ancestry'.

Well, I only look at 'Malayali' and 'Bengali' as words (and not as types of people) and try to prove that both words are basically from the same language - Tamil.

The following is my understanding of the historical derivation of 'Malayalam'.

(A small note on the pronunciation: the 'a' before the second 'l' in 'Malayali' is an extended one; so is the only 'a' in Bengali. in 'Malayali' the second 'l' is retroflexed)

'Mala' is an old Dravidian (and Tamil) word for 'hill'. 'Aal' ('l' retroflexed) is also a very old Dravidian word for 'person'. The geographical region that is approximately the present day Kerala was known to heartland Tamils as the 'hill country' ie. the 'mala-country'. An inhabitant of this land came to be referred to as 'Malayali' (Mala + Aal in a Tamil-style join). The 'i' ending is fairly common in Tamil - for instance, 'Vil'('bow') + 'Aal' = Villali ('archer') - I don't know which are the contexts in Tamil where this 'i' ending happens, because there are also constructions like: 'Kaal' (foot) + 'aal' = 'Kaalaal' (foot-soldier) - no 'i' ending there.

Anyways, the 'hill country' presumably came to be known as the 'land of the hill people' ie. land of the Malayalis and the (appropriately inflected) word for it came to be 'Malayalam'. Moreover the Dravidian tongue spoken in 'Malayalam' came to be referred to by the same name. Yes, there is a certain loopiness about "the land of the people of the hill land' but then, ...

As for Bengal, it is 'Vanga' + 'Aal'. Anga or Vanga is the old Sanskrit/Prakrit name for that region. A person from Vangadesham, ie. Vanga country will be 'Vangali' in Tamil. It is not even a step now to 'Vangalam' which the land of the 'Vangalis'. All that has happened since then is very superficial - a replacement of 'v' with 'b' and a 'straightening out' of the 'l' (the 'e' of Bengal is seems to be a British 'innovation' and the dropping of the 'am' at the end, a pan-North Indian Persian induced(?) phenomenon). Indeed, the Tamil origin of the word is barely concealed. One may also note a difference here - unlike in the case of Malayalam, the language spoken by the Vangalis came to be known as 'Vangali' itself and did not assume the name of the land. But this does not seem to undermine our general conclusion.

Note 1: The word 'aal' was present, according to some theories, in the (poorly understood Dravidian) language of the ancient Indus valley.

Note 2: The 'm' ending of both 'Malayalam' and 'Vangalam' might just indicate a trace of Sanskrit influence on (even ancient) Tamil.

Note 3: Oddly enough, even among educated modern Bengalis, a confusion seems to prevail - 'Malayali' is believed to be the language of Kerala and a person speaking it is *a* 'Malayalam'!