Friday, February 26, 2010

How not to name you child?

Disclaimer: This is not a "how to" or suggestion list to name your child or else wise an offence to those whose name appears here. It is a work of fiction, any resemblance with any living or dead is purely coincidental.
Incidentally it came up in my mind, when I heard the name called "Chunna" (might be a nickname), when a woman near my home was shouting on her son. With this, we can very well think of the odds, that might come up with the name that we are choosing for our new ones. Here are few of the considerations:

1. Name elegantly:
In olden days, people used to name "Chunna", "Munna", "Gudiya", "Babu", "Kallu", "Mitthu" etc.
You might be surprised to know, two elderly siblings, at my hometown has names - Anno and Mujji respectively. Now think, someone calling you as, "oye mujji idhar aana". So name elegantly, keeping in mind next 50 years. You might very well know, Chiraunjilal.. (Khosla ka ghosla). These names don't work anymore in present.

2. Names based on film stars or celebrities:
This might be funny if someone calling you Shahrukh Khan. Often people name there kids, sometimes unintentionally, with superstar's name. e.g. One may call his son as Aamir. But since the family name is Khan, it becomes Aamir Khan. Which raises difficulty later.
It is left to the readers to imagine someone calling you Tushar Kapoor :)

3. Always try to form anagrams:
Anagrams are the words that are created by jumbling the alphabets. A friend of mine named Anjuman Bhatla (name changed), has an anagram of Batman!!

4. Keep in mind the reverse of the name:
e.g. Atir becomes Rita.
Amir becomes Rima. Oops, changed the gender as well.

5. Changing one or two characters should not blast out the name.
I've a good example to make here, my name itself, Shamail.. When I was in school, others just replaced 'a' with 'e' and it became SHE-MAIL! Now thats pathetic!
A friend of mine, Adil got printed on his I-Card Adick.
A friend of my brother has name Saadh, What if you replace 's' with 'p'. OH MY GOD..

6. Pronunciation:
Shamail (sha-ma-el) is usually pronounced as, sha-mil, sha-mail (as in GMAIL), shu(the one we says to dogs)-mal etc etc.
Anas, read the way you want.. !!! (Anus?)

6. Does including sir name still keeps the name intact?
A cousin of mine has a name "Taha Ahmad", say it quickly to make it "Tehmad"

7. Is the name too old fashioned or ultra modern?
Imagine calling a 2yr child with name "Maurya Ranjan". How would his mom scold him? "Maurya Ranjan ye kya kar rahe ho!"
Similarly, imagine a 60 yr old lady called Pinky or Sweety!

In my school days, when it was time when we awaits 6 days to get 30 mins of P.T class as games, and whole of the week, it was team building, making decisions of what to play etc etc.
But to note, we used to call our friends in abbreviation. but these abbreviations are not the initials of that person. Its very different. This abbreviation is the initial of the fathers name!
e.g. I "Shamail Tayyab" was called by name MT and not ST. Similarly one of my friend Mohan was called BS (fathers name Bharat Singh)

Now this is interesting, we could keep our offspring with a name subjected to a lot of filters, but do you have any solution for this? What would name your kid if your name is Anant Shyam Sundar...

4 comments:

  1. You should not display email id of the commenter. Spammers might harvest it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Coool man...made me a bit worried for what shall i name my child...chiraunji lal jaisa rakh dunga kuch...puri life galiyan marega mujhe.... Really a nice one to start with...humorous honest and fresh..

    ReplyDelete