Showing posts with label babies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label babies. Show all posts

Friday, March 22, 2013

Thy name

On 8th March, 2013, I became a proud “bua“/Aunt (my cousin gave birth to a really pretty angel) .I popped the question in high pitched excited tone the day she was born “What do we call her  ?" I was asked for suggestions and I did my homework and here are my 2 cents (Rs 4 in INR) :

When Juliet said “What's in a name ? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." Shakespeare was definitely deluded!!
As I dig through Wikipedia entries, I realize increasingly, parents are giving their children unconventional, made-up names which are not linked to any specific language or cultural tradition and could belong to any part of a cosmopolitan planet. Saddle a little kid with a name like Subharnarekha and likely as not she'll grow up and emigrate to Antarctica, or Adelaide, or Kotakinabalu, where everyone, starting with herself, will call her Subs for short, and also for long.
No, made-up names, which sound good and are easy to pronounce in any language you like, including Esperanto, are definitely a yes-yes, as distinct from a no-no. The name that identifies you should be like your fingerprint: exclusively yours and yours alone, as individualistic and un-interchangeable as you know yourself to be.
A made-up name doesn't carry unnecessary and sometimes inconvenient baggage. A child named after a well-known politician, say, might well be embarrassed in later life to be the namesake of a politician caught out in a major scam or scandal, as well-known politicians seem increasingly likely to be.
History has a way of turning heroes into villains. Unlike an Adolf, or a Stalin, or a Mao, made-up names don't run the risk of one day turning out to be politically incorrect. Free of the burden of history, made-to-order names — or designer names, if you prefer — are not about the past, but about a future which will be as independent and creative as the out-of-the-box-named individual chooses it to be.
Indeed, this business of unusual name-calling could well turn out to be just that: a mega-business, like iPhones or Twitter. Future jobs could include that of the professional name-caller, whom people would consult to devise an original name for them, much like people go to event managers today to devise original theme parties for them.
Lawyers and patent attorneys would also benefit, what with people registering their names under the Copyright and Trade Marks Act. After all, little use going to a name-designer, and paying the person a lot of money, if a couple of weeks later you discover that the person next door has pinched the name you've chosen so that there are now not one but two Ulianilonias, or Zingaloos, or whatever, on the block, whereas by all intellectual property rights there should only be one, your Ulianilonia, or your Zingaloo, or your whatever.
Numerologists will ensure that the name you chose is not only one-of-a-kind but also numerically calculated to bring good fortune to the person who is called by it. However, as in all things, moderation has to be exercised in name-calling. For instance, while Zyxwrut, or Aeiou, might be even uniquer than an Aadhaar number/SSN, as well as being numerologically sound, that they require a contortionist's tongue to pronounce should rule them out.

Some names are just too bizarre to be for real.
For example, what weirdo would end up being called Swati?

Duh!