11 Jun 2004
Whats in a name?
What's up with people? I mean, some 20 -30 years ago, people gave much simpler names to their kids like Ramesh, Suresh, Kumar, Geetha, Sita, Rani...... and these days they somehow tend to come up with Akanksha, Ananya, Ajathashatru and other such tongue-twisters.
I was checking on the name of a kid with his parent (my ex-colleague), and pat came the reply, "Prajval". "Oh! sounds good!!!" (true lies - truth is, i haven't heard that name before). I dont have a circle of friends who have kids (I can tolerate kids, but not their parents who fuss over them no end - another pet peeve, that deserves another post), or else, I could have come up with much more examples of names that have little practical advantage. I wonder why people resort to this convention of naming their kids with an unheard of, unpronouncable name. All those who are guilty of this crime, come up with your excuse :)
The best naming story however would be this: I had a collegue by name 'Dukman'. It was not intended to be that, though. The originally intended name was 'Lukman' - a not so common Muslim name (I think). But while submitting his school application, his dad wrote his name with such an artistic handwriting that the 'L' appeared like 'D' to the school assistant accepting the application. So, he was entered as 'Dukman' in the school records and was condemned to life-long 'dukh'. He had a tough time answering the question, "May I know who's speaking?" at the other end of the phone, coz, well..... his dad had a beautiful handwriting :)
Current Mood: Cheerful
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By Mayavi
11 Jun 2004, 9:23am [ Reply ]
How about 'skylab' for a name? Met this maharashtrian dude last month, "Hello, I am skylab"... took me sometime to come out of shock. Apparently this dude was born on the day when skylab crashed, so his parents named him Skylab!
By JLU
11 Jun 2004, 10:52am [ Reply ]
Hi MM :)
Skylab? Hmmm.... maybe the person spells disaster like his name.... and his visionary parents knew it the day he was born :) The following Whitesnake song echoes similar thoughts:
When I heard the sound of thunder
On the day that I was born,
I was blinded by the lighting
An' baptised in the storm
My father started crying
When he saw what he had done,
But, my mother started praying
Have mercy on my son,
He is a child of Babylon
By Aran
11 Jun 2004, 10:33pm [ Reply ]
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. With a name which gets pronounced "Harsha" - like that king dude - I've had plenty of trouble in my school days. I wonder what makes stupid halfwits think I might be named Harsha. Have you ever seen a girl named Harsha? Do I look like a Harsha? And then the surname... it's spelled a teeny bit differently from how it's supposed to be; which resulted in me getting a memo which misspells my surname (but spells it just the way its supposed to where dear daddy's name is mentioned) and then I am still trying to get it changed. Life's not fair.
By kj
12 Jun 2004, 4:30pm [ Reply ]
:D
By JLU
15 Jun 2004, 1:36pm [ Reply ]
A first name which sounds like 'Harsha' and a surname which gets mispelt where it matters and spelt correctly where it doesn't? Aran, I think you are sunk. There's no hope left for you :)
KJ, thanks for being here :)