The Cochin State Manual

It is so called after the village of the same name— in the Ponnani Taluk of Malabar which is said to have been the original seat of the family and where the coronation ceremony of the kings of Cochin used to be performed till the middle of the seventeenth century. [...] The name Cochin appears to have been given first to the town which came into existence after the formation of the harbour in 1341 afterwards to the country in the immediate vicinity of the town and finally to the whole territory under the rule of the Perumpadappu Svarupam. [...] The Peranda the Olipara the Ayilur and the Kudallur are small streams that drain the lower reaches of the Nelliampaties and the Pottundies and pass through the Nemmara portion of the Chittur Taluk in their course to the Ponnani river through the adjoining British territory. [...] The sea originally extended as far as the eastern shore of the present line of back-waters and the tract of land between the latter and the sea and the back-waters themselves came into existence in comparatively recent times by the antagonism between the rushing waters of the rivers land the littoral currents of the sea. [...] The abundance as well as the irregular distribution of the rainfall is caused by the Western Ghats which arrest the lower strata of rain clouds brought up from the Indian Ocean by the periodical winds of the south-west monsoon and cause the rain to precipitate on the narrow stretch of country between them and the sea.