Emden Mahan

None of my Tamizh litterate friends could give a good meaning or origin of the word Emden. Saumya's dad gave an interesting story of a W-II German ship called Emden that fired on chennai and ever since the word Emden has been used for a daring deed or person. Looks like he was 100% correct. Here is a cut/paste from wikipedia about Emden

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Two German light cruisers were named after the city, one in World War I -- SMS Emden, and another built after WWI -- Emden. Nowadays, the fifth Navy ship named after the city is in service.

During her commerce raiding in the Indian Ocean in early WWI, SMS Emden sailed into the Bay of Bengal on India's eastern coast and fired two cannon shots at Fort St. George located on the sea front of Chennai (formerly Madras); there were no casualties. The ship then sailed down the east coast of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). A Boer wildlife official, HH Engelbrecht, was jailed after being falsely accused of having supplied meat to the cruiser [1]. SMS Emden also sank a Russian cruiser in Penang harbour in Malaya. On November 9, 1914, during a raid on the Cocos Islands to destroy a British telegraph station, Emden was trapped and destroyed by the HMAS Sydney.

Nowadays, the fifth Emden ship is in service. The frigate of the German Navy was built in 1980, and started its service in 1983. It was the first of those five ships named after the city which was also built there (at Nordseewerke shipyards).

To this day in some parts of south India, a particularly daring and capable person is referred to in the vernacular as "Emden". In Sri Lanka, "Emden" is the bogeyman with which mothers scare their children and is used to refer to a particularly obnoxious person.