Whats in a name

Naming a child is a task in itself. A task you can never be sure that you will succeed. For one, the name might become so common that your child will grow up to find his namesakes everywhere and for another that it might be so unique that every time you tell it to someone, they will never get it right atleast the first time around.

Dhairya and Vihaan come in the second category maybe and precisely because Swetha and Ashish come in the first. As such, children cannot name themselves, so the parents, or the aunts or the grandparents or as whoevers custom is, should name them, not predicting that the child will grow up to like or not like their names.

Have you watched the movie Namesake or read the novel on which the movie is based on?? Goggol - does not like his name and understandably so. So how are the parents to decide what their child is going to grow up to like or not like. Yet they have to !!

My mom kindly named me what she did, a nice and unique name in the late 70's. But I guess most mom's thought the same way then. I grew up with having 3 namesakes in a classroom with 50 children for the whole decade and then 4 in my next institution. Thankfully not many Swethas chose to do engineering esp in BMS EEE. I was saved thereafter that there was no namesake from then on till now ...none in the class and none at work :)

At an Indian restaurant in London on a frightfully crowded Sunday, the waiting list announced three Ashish in a row, all of them puzzled to know which one was who.

Well, there is a great advantage with having a common name. You do not have to repeat it for anyone, in fact sometimes if you fill half of it on any application form, someone could complete it. Also most of your neighbours or aquaintances will be able to remember your name and just because your name might remind them of someone very close to them or someone who has really hurt them and left a reason for them to be remembered. Pray you fall in the first category lest names can make people prejudiced against what they feel about you.

We named Dhairya and Vihaan on their moon signs respectively. For Dhairya, we considered Dheer, Dhaval and Bhavya also but at last settled for Dhairya. Vihaan was a choice out of a list containing Vishw, Veer, Vismay, Vansh.

Even new names have sometimes become such rage with people they hardly take time to become so common. Aryan, Aayush like Rahul and Rohan a few years back. I wish that babies came with a name tag when they were born, so we did not have to go about looking for a name for them which we can never be sure they will appreciate once they grow. But since that cannot happen, let us just cross fingers and hope.