What's in a Name?

What’s in a Name

    “What's in a name”, the Bard put it across so innocuously; a lot , I hope most would agree. It wasn't always so, history is replete with examples where they took pride in simply anointing the names of their parents, ancestors on the new born. Wonder if they were really short of names(!) This practice is prevalent in the West, with just a suffix of junior is considered adequate to distinguish the two individuals. The senior George Bush and the junior one, both were proud occupants of the Oval office of the White House, the only case of father and son occupying the same office in US.

In India we name our kids with lot of pride after Gods and Goddesses, film and Cricket stars and or going with the latest fads of being different, highly Sanskritised tongue twisters, which the poor child takes a couple of years to pronounce correctly. Others of course twist the name to suit their vocabulary or acquired skills in pronouncing. Even numerologists tinker with the spellings of the name to seemingly assuage the Gods into showering their bounty on these poor souls. So Ayushman Khurana becomes Ayushmaan Khurranna, the name essentially remaining the same with just the spellings being stretched to the limit for pleasing the Lords...

Pre-independence and immediately after that historic event, the flavour of names was obviously quite patriotic, with kids being named after Subhash Bose, Azad, Bhagat and even Jawahar were quite common. Girls were Kamla (Nehru's not so famous spouse) and Laxmi (after Rani of Jhansi) if not Saraswati, Gauri or any other goddess. They took care to avoid naming these girls “Seeta”, having read about the tribulations that she had to endure in Ramayana. But gradually the Film industry and cricketers stars/ starlets dominated the firmament and Dileep, Dev, Raj, Amitabh, Sunil, Sachin, Kapil were dime a dozen. Similarly there were only Hemas, Rekhas, Meenas and Sadhnas amongst girls.

 Our idol worship has been taken to a different level altogether by some Tamilians, who have taken  ownership of many a foreign dignitaries' names, the most famous being Stalin, supposedly named after Comrade Stalin in the hey days of communism. Can you imagine any Russian naming his kid Stalin? But our DMK patriarch apparently felt that naming his progeny after the Russian dictator was a testimony to Indo-Russian friendship. Or maybe he wanted to prove his communist credentials and did not want to leave anything to chance. The prodigal son today is the undisputed leader of DMK at least if not of TamilNadu, his allegiance to the ideals of Marx and Lenin are at best restricted to lip service. Similarly Kennedy, no not JFK, but our very own indigenous Tamil anna, my driver in Wellington, is another on with a famous name. But why single out the Tamilians, Punjabis are no less with their penchant for abbreviating the names to suit their happy go lucky lifestyle. So every second or third child is “Happy”, the first one is “Lucky”, of course ,and mind you they are gender neutral, so “Navjot” Singh is married to “Navjot” Kaur, both are “newly illuminated” literally and metaphorically. A friend of my son is “Marshall Goldsmith”, a strange and peculiar name in the land of Happys and Luckys…. So out of curiosity when I asked the kid, he said his father is a cricket aficionado and a fan of Caribbean Cricketers; Malcom Marshall was amongst the most deadly pacers in the world in the 80s. Since he named him Marshall, he thought a Singh as the surname would be out of place and Goldsmith sounded power packed.

I have had my share of brush with names; when my parents decided to name me Suyash more than half a century ago, I wish they had patented it, as it was not just unique and different, I think I was probably the only homo sapien with such a name. Yash was quite common but a mere prefix of “Su” went on to qualify the fame associated with this innocuous sounding name. Little did they realise then that I will probably be called by similar sounding names all my life, the bane of having an uncommon name…… right from early childhood, the first name one was mistaken with was “Suresh” which of course could be pardoned after all it sounded alike and was much more common, except that more often than not, the person at the other end refused to understand the subtle difference the “re” made to my name and my very persona. After all with such a unique name I had to be special! Then the modified version of my own name spelt with an “e” rather than the “a”, ie Suyesh in place of Suyash. The name took a different twist with the Yesh sounding as though one was the spoilt brat indulging in the vices, as “Aish” in Hindi is synonymous with pursuit of hedonistic pleasures. This tryst with twisted names continues till date….

My first Commanding officer  Late Brig (then Col) Subhash Datta was a hard core Punjabi who could never get my name right and addressed me as "Piyush", "Siyush", "Sayush" everything except Suyash. My senior subaltern Capt ( later Col) Kulkarni  started calling me “Soyuz” as at least that my CO would get  right. So Soyuz I was in the unit. This ordeal of name calling (pun intended) has gone on ever since, I am not one to give up, so dutifully correct everyone who goes about mispronouncing my name. This has taken alarming proportions specially with the Information revolution suddenly empowering the masses with the ubiquitous smart phones. The mere possession of smart phones does not in any way make them smart is obvious as they leave no doubt in my mind when they address me by the myriad versions of my name and I have to get them to spell out the name and correct the pronunciation, even if he/she is a tele-caller.  

I have always believed that names play a very important part in the shaping the personality of an individual. A unique different name bestows on the individual an egalitarian persona, motivating him/her to strive for excellence in order to stand out of the ordinary in every sphere. I am obviously extremely proud of my name, for which the credit squarely goes to my parents. Sure enough, I went ahead and named my kids also with unique names, son being christened Abhijat, different from the common Abhijit, the "a" making him quite "original" . The daughter is "Ananya", which means unique, as she goes about explaining very proudly to everyone. I have not made their life easy…they have to endure their share of name distorters…..