Raghavendra, call me Rag ( dishcloth, whatever!)

Raghavendra, call me Rag ( dishcloth, whatever!)

Some of us friends were discussing the new trends in baby names. First it was Arvind, Aditya, preeti and Neha; then it was Sachin and Rahul and Priyanka and Aishwarya.All these seem passé now so we wondered what was the decade’s flavour. There seems to be a preference for unique names rather than the names of popular heroes. Achintya, Bhadraksh, Adiyaman, Poongkuzhali, Aghanasini, Ahladita, Anarghya are just a few of the new baby names I heard recently. All so beautiful and sweet sounding but some are such twisters even to the Indian tongue. Imagine what might happene to Achintya and Ahladita where Padma can become bathma and mohan become a Mowgun! Recently I asked someone what his daughter’s name was and he said Ahila which I thought was Ahalya but it turns out that the child’s name is Akhila! Now some of these Anarghyas and poongkuzhalis are kids of NRI parents. I shudder to think of their fate in American mouths. They cannot pronounce simple names like Usha and kamala without making them into oosha and Camilla so why even think of names like Samarapungavan or Gnanambika. Mince meat is the term that comes to mind immediately – If you are a Tamilian think of what Udit Narayan does to Tamil in his songs. Kapisch?

I had a classmate in college with a really beautiful name – Tamizharasi. It means Tamil Queen but invariably the north Indian girls converted it to Tamilarisi making it Tamil Rice ( arisi: rice; arasi: queen)
If that was the result of inability to pronounce or ignorance of the language, there have been wanton abuse of names in the name of love . People try to shorten official names into short, cute (?) ones for daily usage and in the process end up distorting them. In our family and among our acquaintances and friends we had some classic examples of beautiful names totally annihilated:
Karpagam – Cuppu ( cuppa?)
Shivapriya – sheepri ( baa baa)
Padmini – Puppy (woof woof)
Kowsalya – Cow see ( mooooooo)
Meena lochani – Low chee ( can it get lower than this?)
Baghirathi – Baki or Bagee ( balance of what?)
Radhakrishnan – Rakittu/ Rockettu ( high flier indeed!)
and the Srinivasans who became Cheeni (cho chweet) .

And then there were those names that made you an easy target for ridicule among friends when they wanted to settle scores. There was a boy in the neighbourhood with a lovely name : Lokabhiraman. But when his friends wanted to tease him he became Lokapi (low kaapi?) and sometimes kakapi ( meaning crow shit in Tamil). Then there was a boy with a majestic name like Kulothungan ( the name of a famous Chola king ) but people insisted on calling him Clothu as if he was a piece of fabric. And Poor Savithri in our class was always called Savi one or Savi two but never Savi three.

I am not a great fan of shortening names and mangling them . But I must admit that I was impressed when I heard about two sisters named Ramya and Ranjini whose father shortened them to Rum and Gin! I bet you have seen similar creativity applied while destroying names. Please share.

The Name game

The Name game

Names, as I have said before, are, like the third variety of greatness that Shakespeare spoke of, "thrust upon you." Well in my school days i'd have liked to be Yamini, Kamini, Ragini or at least Nalini which would have allowed me to share my name with a favourite teacher. But no, my folks had decided that I'd be a Usha. They had a Ravi and Chander before and they probably decided to explore the space in-between and came up with Usha! Or may be it was just that every 3rd child was named Usha in my days and voilà, I was the third wasn't I? Anyway, by the time I was old enough and brave enough to go to the gazette and have a name change, I had achieved enough notoriety to go with this name that I did not want to lose this identity. So here I am and even for writing a blog I could not come up with a fascianting name like Hyperactive Amygdala or Synaptic Catharisis (or Cathartic Synapses) but had to be the plain Usha. This is what happens to you when you are stuck with a boring name for 45 years.

Well, why this rant about a name all of a sudden? Ok, that is because the daughter of lady who gets our clothes ironed came today with a dog in tow. What with my natural instinct for socialising with animals, I needed an introduction so I could chat up the dog and endear myself. So I asked her what the name was and she responded "Rosie". Nice name, better than usha for sure but I had a problem with it. I looked again at the said canine and I could see without any doubt that it was a male. Rosie for a male dog? In my mind this amounted to cruelty and I was about to call the SPCA.
Poor guy, to be called Rosie forever. I was reminded of all the Radhakrishnans and Sitaramans who end up being Radhas and Sitas. But at least the dog had no way of knowing that he had a cute, sissy name like "Rosie" so he responded to that name with absolute dignity as if he was being called Caesar!

Then I realised that most of the mongrels are called Raja or Jimmy or Blackie or Peter if they are male and Ramu (if they're Tamil) and most females of the species are Rosie or Jikki (djikki?). And if it was a pomeranian it was Julie. (in fact my maid thinks Julie is the name of the breed and calls all poms "julie Naayi").In one friends house they called out to "Lakshmi" and out came the canine bounding with joy! My shock was almost similar to the time when I heard so much about a Mittal with the same first name and was so proud of an Indian woman who produced most of the steel in the world and then saw the photo for the first time!

Anyway back to names of dogs
Aren't the bigger pedigree dogs mostly Caesars and Cleos?and sometimes a Bruno if they are brown. Calling call them Tiger shows total ignorance that the real Tiger is a Big cat.Lassie became a common name for golden retrievers after the film and its endearing lead star. Spotty and Puppy and dolly are perhaps the least imaginative.Our colony has some of the dogs with most original names. Our own Sabapathy doesnt qualify for entry here because we "borrowed the idea" from the Tamil Film Sati Leelavathi. So here are the prize winners:
A daschund called Brandy
A Labrador called Pepsi
Another labrador called Random
A terrier called Bayroz
A mongrel called Biscuit ( pronounced Biscoot)
And Shib's dog Shadow ( She wanted to call it Kempe Gowda's shadow - even better!)
Two boxers called Kaaju and Badam who belong to our friends, the Sens.

I was terribly annoyed when I saw these cutest little pups of the world (Pug pups - ya same dog as in the HUTCH ad)at the Alliance Francaise the other day and guess what they decided to call them - Micky and Minnie. Can you believe it - MICKY and MINNIE!!! What is wrong with these people? I was so angry all of that day.

Anyway what would you like to call the Hutch Pug if he was yours? I will probably call him Karma or Carma, if I want to sound French!
(His/ her real name is Cheeka.)

(And ya, warning: I WILL judge you by the name you give your dog!)