WHAT IS IN A NAME?
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By A Narayanaswami
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I was travelling from New Delhi to Madras by Tamil Nadu Express in the year 1984 along with my family and children. During the train journey a middle aged learned man who was travelling in the compartment talked about all subjects under the sun from vegetable prices to religion and politics. When I was inquiring what his name was as he was preparing to get down in the next junction, started smilingly telling his name as Therezhundur Srinvasasa Rajagopola Varaha Venkatesa Krishna Desikan. By the time he completed telling his name the next junction arrived. My daughter inquired why the gentleman has such a lengthy name when his elder brother has such a short name as Prasad. I briefly explained to he that it is customary for our ancestors who were especially particular to name their progenies after many names of lord and his consort, (like Narayana, Rama, Hari, Madhava, Achutha, Govinda, Vani. Durga, Parvathi etc,) that underlying idea being that every one who address them by their names will be invoking the lord all the time I also explained to her that they will be adding their village or town where from the family hails along with their names. Fortunately for Hindus there is no problem to find suitable names as the number of gods and goddesses are so many. One can easily locate suitable names in the Vishnu Sahasranama, lalitha Shasraanama , Laskhmi and other different stothras.

When I went along with a group of friends to Stanford Hospital to check the progress of friend Srinivasa Ayyar of Pakistan (we call him Pakistan Gandhi) We experienced lot of difficulties in locating his ward and room number. The reception counter wanted the last name of the person. We gave last name as Ayyar for which she replied that there was no person baving such a name. We met a doctor Ariz Mohammed who was standing nearby an he also could not help eventhogh Mr Ayyar was in the hospital nearly for a month. During the dicussion we had with the doctor we came to know that Ayyar was his Physics Professor in the Lahore college and his son was his class mate. He was under the impression that Iyer was in Pakistan and he was also eager to meet him.
After trying various permutations of Ayyar we could locate his bed after giving the name Iyer.. Spelling matters much in this computer age. In India people adopt different spellings in the names like Subramaniam, Subramanian, Subrhmanian, Subrahmaniam etc.

My mind’s eyes were roaming thinking about the episode a couple of days back
and whatever came to my my mind I have put it in this paper for presentation to this august group.

How important is baby name? The choice of a baby name will have a profound effect on the personal characteristics of your baby. Your name is extremely important. Your name is your life. It is how you identify yourself in a group. In our country in some families they give the names of politicians, well historical names, cinema actor and actresses or some time the name of the cinema itself. Like Baby Saroja, Kamala, Sivaji, and Madnamakamarajan. Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, etc.

, My mother’s younger sister delivered a baby girl after returning from the film “Dulari” 4 decades back and named her daughter by the pet name “DULARI” though the usual name given was Sriranjani, rarely called by that name. Dulari remained forever. She is in RBI Madras and she got her daughter married. Even today she is called Dulari. There are some cases where parents give names as Pichai (which means gift) especially when they lost many children either as children or as still born children who die early. In many families in the South, it is customary to have pet names for children, which has gone to a ludicrous extent. (Narasimhan as Nachu, Narayana as Nanu, Subramaniam as Mani or Subbu, Meenakshi as Meenu, Kamakshi as Kama or Kamu, Saraswathi as Sacchu, Viswanathan as Vichu or Vicha, Dattreya as Dathu , Jayalakshmi as Joy,Krishnamuthy as Kittu, Kittan, Vanchinathan as Vanchu, Balasubramnanian, as Balu Sreenivasan as Seemachu Pasupathy as Pasu or Pachappa . Ven.katraman as Venkittu etc to cite some examples. The significance of naming children after the Gods is utterly lost by such reprehensible practices

In some families Abstract names are given in India like in this country. (Names such as Mammoty an instrument for digging (He acts as Ambedkar ins Dr Ambedkar, Mannankatty (Earth ball) In some cases the pet names will remain forever tne original names will disappear. Ganesan who acted as Sivaji came to be known only as Sivaji. Rajnikanth’s name (Director changed his name from Sivaji as there was already one Sivaji existing). In the recent year short names were preferred to long names and names were so chosen so that the full identity of the person relating to which region he belongs are not revealed like Dilip, Ajit, Prasad, Varuns Arun, Amit, etc. are not Some parents call their children as Baby or Papa which is carried even when they become old. One elderly gentleman introduced himself as Baby Kittan. His name was actually Krishnan In his younger days his name was Baby Kittan which remained for ever.

In our country according to religious practices the namakaranam of the baby takes place on the 10th, 12th or 16th day of the child’s birth. To do this on any other day we have to fix an auspicious day. The child should be given the name of his forbears or that of some deity. Later on. People gave names of gem stones, animal names, translation of Sanskrit names in their vernacular languages, well known names of kings, birds, names of ragas like kalyani , sahana etc.

I noticed a further twist in the naming of children by Indian in USA. They prefer names with less than 5 to six letters. There are variety of books for selecting names etc. and they even circulate the name among whites in the office and study as to how they pronounce and adopt the names easily pronounceable by them though we don’t bother to pronounce the difficult French, Russian and polish names with minimum of vowels would like to recall a case where a child had to change her name by paying 500 dollars the charge for changing the name when she was eight years old as his class mates were ridiculing him as “Shit. The boy’s name was parikshit.

When I was waiting in doctor’s clinic the nurse came and announced “Tuesday” I got up and said today is Wednesday. She laughed and added that she was announcing the name of a patient. A gentleman got up and went inside. I thought he was the fan of Lal Bahadur Shastri because of the following events,
He was born on Tuesday. Once while bathing in the Ganges, he slipped from his mother’s leg and unfortunately his absence was not noticed. Luckily he fell into a farmer’s basket and was rescued. The day was Tuesday. 3. In the year 1940, he was arrested on a Tuesday. He was first made the minister in UP on a Tuesday. In the year 1947 again on Tuesday he was made the communication ministers in the central cabinet. On Tuesday in 1951 he was made the President of Congress. He was made the Railway minister on Tuesday in 1957. He became the Home minister on the year 1957. He became India’s Prime minister on a Tuesday. He received the Bharat Rathna award from Dr RadhaKrishnan on Tuesday. He signed the Tashkent agreement on Tuesday and he died on Tusesday (from Wisdom Magazine Jan 1987)
(Writer is a former Deputy General Manager, Bharat Heavy Electrical, India.)
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