What is in a name?

First impressions count, and our names are a big part of the first impressions we make when meeting new people.

I had once chanced to meet an elderly couple at the airport. Little Princess’s antics were all it took to break the ice and get the lovely lady to reminisce about her children whom they were visiting. The elderly lady explained that her husband was a keen reader.

They had named their daughter Mona Lisa after the protagonist in the book he was reading at the time of her birth. And Mona Lisa, she explained proudly, was an artist. The husband had taken to Indian mythology during the birth of their son and hence he was named Surya, after the Sun deity. I wondered if he had a say in naming the child that she said their son was expecting, for during the time of our conversation, the gentleman had his nose buried in ‘The World of Vikings’ by Justin Pollard!

For my parents who have their roots in the South Indian state of Kerala but lived outside it, they were caught in a dilemma between adhering to the norms of naming their first born as per tradition — namely leaving the task in the able hands of grandparents, or daring to bend the rules or not adhering to them all together.

At a time when search engines were among friends and your trusted mate with all the answers, Google, were in the pages of books, scriptures or astrologer, Father was on a lookout for a name that was unique, Mother was often heard saying. It was a friend who is said to have come up with my name that both my parents immediately agreed — one that even combined a bit of both of parents’ names.

Luckily for me, even dares and the task of finding unique names were simpler during those times, or I would have been called Kapil-a Soyuz T-11 — after the two great events of Kapil Dev lifting the World Cup for India and the rocket that the first Indian, Rakesh Sharma, entered space in — that occurred during the time of my birth.

They did make up for the dare when my brother was born, for grandmother is said to have selected his name from a bottle full of names written on chits. Strangely enough the choice was exactly what Mother had wished for and no one bothered checking the other chits, which might actually have all had the same name — a name that was another combination of both of my parents’ names put together.

How much does the first piece of information about a person, the name, have a significance in their life?

How often do we get judged only by our names?

An article on BBC talked about an Indian engineer, Saddam Hussain, who was refused to be hired more than 40 times. His grandfather’s idea to give his grandson a ‘powerful’ name spewed more power than he intended.

Did you hear about the parents who went on for a two-for-one deal with their son and named him Batman Bin Suparman, where Suparman is a common surname in the Java islands from where he hails. Not someone you would want in your superhero team for contrary to his double heroic name, Batman Bin Suparman saves ‘his’ day by stealing and living out of other people’s hard-earned money between spending some time behind bars.

Will Michael with the surname Jackson be expected to moonwalk his first baby steps?

Or would we rather go by the words of the great Bard — “What’s in a name? That which we call rose by any other name, will smell as sweet.”

What’s your name story?

— Pranitha Menon is a freelance writer based in Dubai. Twitter: @MenonPranitha