Its an old joke…I am sure you must have heard it before. Shakespeare said “what’s in the name?” and signed his very own name underneath !! I happened to catch the Namesake (starring Irrfan Khan, Tabu and Kal Penn) again on Fox recently. The last time I saw it was on the plane on my way back to India. Hmm…that was a while ago. Moving on…once again, the movie fascinated me. Great screenplay and direction (Mira Nair). In the movie, the protagonist (Kal Penn) hates his name and changes it. When he does find out why his Dad (Irrfan Khan) decided to name him so (Gogol, after the great Nikolai Gogol) he changes it back.
Only recently one of my colleagues asked me “what nicknames do people refer you with?” I had a list…I guess the most prominent ones on it were Pawn (acquired since I was a puny compared to my bro, refers to the smallest statuette on the chess board, his favourite game then), Elk Junior (as my bro was the senior one of course), Elk-ya and so on and so forth. In Australia, people have started a new trend. I respond to Roger (from the cartoon character Roger Ramjet), Ron, Jeet or RJ. Back in the day I was called “Nana (Nuh-na)” apparently because that’s what I called myself when speaking in third person singular. My grandparents used to call me that.
With this conversation fresh in my mind and having watched the Namesake again, I started wondering why my folks decided to name me Ranjeet. On the contrary, when I was visiting my friends in the Middle East, they addressed me as “Rasheed”. What’s in the name? May be its just a matter of convenience…..if your name is hard for someone to comprehend…Asians have an anglicized name too….its a bit too complicated.
First of all, most Hindu names are connected to mythology; one way or the other. Ranjeet literally means “victor on the battlefield, the conqueror”. Sounds cool doesn’t it? I love that its not one of the run of the mill “mythological” name. Sometimes when there have been arguments in the family…me and bro used to joke saying “we are bound to do so …WAR is after all in our blood …our name (Elkunch-WAR)”. Since I was born in Doha (Qatar) they had to tell them my name on the spot….as they had to issue a birth certificate. I came to being 15 days late, and was planning on my first suicide attempt by strangling myself on the umbilical chord; so had to be rescued courtesy a cesarean (my heart had stopped beating so I was almost successful!!).
May be that gave my parents some time to think about my name…hehe….Now that I think about it, I am curious and will bring this up with my parents. I hope one of them answers to this post. I am sure you may have something to say about it as well. Feel free to state your point.
My mom wanted a girl when she had me…..she says it was only until she saw me for the first time !! Nice…she was going to call the girl Poorva (named after zodiac during my birth i.e. Leo, according to the English Zodiac). I am glad that didn’t happen.
As I remember my mom telling me…she was the one who picked the name.Pa only wanted us to have simple names as our surname is complicated enough !! The sisters liked the names Vikram and Ranjeet, something possibly they picked up from the Hindi movies of those days. Vikram means Victor….which ended up as my cousin’s name two years my junior. Apparently the sisters, my mom and my aunt had a toss up for these names for their first born. But weirdly enough no one did so (they named their sons Pranav, meaning praise or salutation and Hrishikesh, alias for the lord Vishnu, meaning a sage who has attained salvation through penance ).
In India, when you are born, they (pundit) create a karmic (or life) chart of the new born called Patrika. That also guides people in naming their children since their names resonate positively with some letters. Owing to that, I had “mo” and “ni” in my patrika. Thus my other name, not as well known at all, is Mohnish (is an alias of Lord Krishna). My brother in his patrika is called Mahendra…much to the delight of his friends….something to tease about….I think I prefer Hrishikesh and Ranjeet.
Another funny anecdote about names stems from a custom in India. A groom is allowed to rename his bride. My Dad renamed my mom, called Chhaya (meaning shade in Sanskrit but also symbolizes the origin of life in Judaism), to Uttara (again the constellation in effect during their wedding, Sagittarius according to the zodiac). Incidentally, my mom had a maid, whose daughter had the same name “Chhaya” as her. Since her mom used to yell out her name in a peculiar way, my Dad was sick of it and changed her name to Uttara. Her family still fondly refer to her by the same name..
Another funny incident happened when my brother was at his high school board exams, kind of a big deal….he was nervous so he just decided to say “hi” to the guys seated next to him…..he did his weird voice (I wasn’t there but I am sure he must have…lol)…and said…”hi I am Hrishikesh”….and the guy said “same to you”…and the other said…”right back at you…”. Needless to say all of them had the same first name..
Personally I love my name. Its cool of course, but the other is it being fairly uncommon in my circle of friends. That adds a uniqueness by itself. How many Marks, Tims, Johns do you know ? And how many Ranjeets? Well may be that’s a bad example….That reminds me, in our high school days, me and a mate did a survey to find out the most common guy and girl names in our batch across various high schools. Apparently we had a lot of spare on our hands. I think we ended up with 10 names for guys and 8 for girls. They encompassed all of my friends !! All of them !!
Just to relive the five days we spent calling out names and checking who turned around (how else would you have done it if you had a lot of time on your hands?) and listing people we knew and taking LCDs (back then they only referred to Least Common Denominators !!:)). The list we had was exclusive and represented a lot of hard work. Here goes:
This sample reflects the guys and girls my age who were around (of the top of my head not in the order of popularity or common-ness), the number in the bracket denotes how many people I know with that name, amongst my friend circles:
Guys: Akshay (12), Ashwin(9), Aditya(15), Omkar(8.3), Kunal(8), Abhishek(13), Rahul(12), Gaurav(10), Amit(9), Ameya(8) (Amol(6), Ashish(7), Kaustubh(6) Tejas (6) Neeraj (5) just missed the cut; most of them start with an A!!)
Girls: Madhura (10), Amruta (12), Aditi(8), Priya(8.2), Manasi,(11) Neha(9), Gauri(9), Anuja(8.2) & Sayali(12)
I was touted as being the “official nick name man”….the nick names I came up with …stuck…period. Anyways…..whats in the name…right? One thing is for sure….I love my name…its kinda cool…and we have a legacy and BIG shoes to fill out !!
Virtual Panopticon 