Dommic Fernandes wrote: To my knowledge there are two different words: The Konkani word for a prostitute is 'cheddi' - for a widow it is 'randd.'
---------------------------------------- In Salcete the words, rand, randi and randul are all used to mean either prostitute or widow. Hence the famous Salcete mando "Pakle te choddun nu re, te eke rand bhaile." Historian Fatima Gracias writes in her book Women of Goa: "There were four catergories of women who preformed duties at the temple; Colvontas, Chedvans, Deulinas and Bandens." In Salcete the word Colvont is also used for prostitute very frequently. I know don't if I'm making the correct deduction here but "chedvan" could have been corrupted into "chedvi" again to mean prostitute. And since the word chedvan also means girl, the word chedvi could simply be a corruption of the word girl. But this is just my own hypotesis based on phonetic sounds of these words having no bearing to the actual etymology and could be entirely wrong. Best, selma
