There’s something about names that sends everyone into a tizzy. Just think of the day the latest addition into the family arrives. Ideas for names come from everyone in the house — and from outsiders too. Everyone has an opinion — and everyone airs it. Just like many feel they have the right to comment on what celebrities name their children — as we saw a couple of weeks ago with Bollywood couple Kareena and Saif Ali Khan’s child.
I recall having ‘n’ number of names ready in my head for my own nieces and nephews when they arrived and I probably proffered them on paper too. I doubt whether the names that were eventually chosen came from my list, but I found them beautiful anyway. They rolled off my tongue with ease and seemed to be exactly what suited that baby.
Before our child was born, we had dozens of names ready. I anticipated many difficult rounds of elimination but, as luck would have it, all the names I had gathered and just couldn’t decide upon were for a girl — and our child turned out to be a boy!
We had just about started on the male side of our list, so naming him was a breeze. No problem with elimination and selection and soul-searching. There was just one name there and he got it.
But, as it turned out, the name we had chosen was not one that had an ‘auspicious’ meaning. Suddenly, from all corners, there were, “Excuse me? What’s that again?” “Wasn’t that the name of a cruel invader?” “Doesn’t it mean darkness?” “How can you name your child darkness?”
I bristled with resentment. Our child had been in the world for barely a couple of days and already he had become the only source of light as far as we were concerned — so what was all this talk of darkness and cruelty? His wails sounded like music to our ears ... naturally, so did his name. And how did it matter to anyone else anyway?
Of course, we had our own way; quickly getting the name signed, sealed and delivered, so to speak, so that there was no going back.
And if, over the course of nearly three decades, we shortened it, mispronounced it or substituted it with sweetie and baby and other words we came up with on the spur of the moment, it didn’t matter. They were all terms of endearment, weren’t they?
I doubt whether the given name of our son ever gave him grief. What annoyed him hugely, however, were the other names he carried around. The family name, the surname ... Additions that spilled out from the box spaces in forms and certificates and often had him fuming. It was no consolation at all when he was reminded that his father and his father’s father carried that baggage as well ...
But that is about personal names.
What happens when someone high up in the chain of command feels that Mumbai’s commuters have spent too much time with local train station names like Marine Lines and Grant Road and decides to Indianise them — and for good measure, change a few other already very Indian names ... while elsewhere in the country, the names of states and cities and streets and airports are altered too?
It is tough to get the new names rolling off our tongues, so inured are we to the old ones and thus we need to constantly explain ourselves to ticketing officers, cab drivers and fellow commuters whom we need to interact with to get to the place where we want to go.
What’s wrong with the tried and tested, we wonder aloud and then we laugh. Because nothing proclaims we are old-timers more effectively than that desire to stick to what we are accustomed to ...
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
