Namesakes....

sunkan · Nov 26, 2007

All in a name:
Why do our Indian counterparts name their children with a female name preceding the male, like meenakshisundaram, lakshminarasimhan, kameshasundharam, lakshminarayanan, seetharaman and many like these?
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Imagine them being addresses as lakshmi or meenu or kamesha and so on.
It also belittles the personality, as he is addressed and ridiculed in youth, sometime to a limit where they do not grow and curb their interest in life.
Both do they get good girl friends and friends who keep calling them by their lady name.
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While we look into these names it looks the origin is to their city deity as we see a lot of people in trichy having akhila a very common name, for akhilandeswari the deity there, and kanthi madi in tirunelveli after the deity there, meenakshi is in every street in Madurai, somasundharam for male.
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In Karnataka, manjunatha is very common, someshwara is another deity who lends his name to all, I am sure north Indians also have as kalipod means kali’s feet in kolkata, and mahalakshmi could be leading in Mumbai, the rest I leave here for the readers to fill in with more information on this..sunkan

Tamildownunder · Nov 26, 2007

Dear Sunkan,

You are right. People give names connected to the city or the city's name itself like Pazhani, Chidambaram, Thirupathi etc. To avoid the embarassment faced by children in future, in Malaysia they have a law preventing parents giving certain names. These names have been arrived at after consulting the respective community leaders like the Tamils, Chinese etc. For example, one can't name a child as mannankatti in Malaysia.

Sriniketan · Nov 27, 2007

In my in-laws family all the 3 children are males, my eldest BL is called LakshmiNarasimhan after the Kula Deivam and others are named after the deities.
Their 'pet names' so as to put in are 'Periya Kannan, Chinna Kannan and Kutti Kannan' respectively.
But you say, where you seen names like--kumar, kumari, rani, shree,etc., added to their names.

sriniketan

Anandchitra · Nov 27, 2007

Dear Sundari
Yet another interesting blog topic from you. Thats seems to be the case when naming children. After city name village name etc. Nowadays I hear of chilren names and they sound so unusual. Cannot understand it when I hear the first time. And parents always have a meaning behind it too. Compared to that city diety name appears simpler and easier on the tongue.

PushpavalliSrinivasan · Nov 27, 2007

Dear Sundari,
I think names like Kuppan, Kuppa , Pichai of yester years. When first two children died, people used to give these mames after laying them on dirt, meaning that they picked them up from dirt and Pichai being KadavuL potta pichai.whch also cause embarrasment. Pet names like baby, sojji, bujju,etc also causes embarrasment when children grow up.As AC has mentioned some of the names that present younger generation choose are tongue twisters.

sunkan · Nov 27, 2007

dear TDU,
nice to know the intervention of the state, good this could avoid a lot of embarrassment to the personality, like malaysia vasudevan the singer, i don't understand, is he from malaysia, any way sometime funny now we have actors and singers also taking their street name and native..may be it helps them with their identity as many names are common these days..sk

sunkan · Nov 27, 2007

true srini,
a lot of names with chinna periya but kannan seems very very common among people and kondey which is also damn common in the palghat section of people, mm now a lot have changed and we neither can spot them with names like until you are told iyer none can segregate, as mudaliars have also taken names like this...sk

sunkan · Nov 27, 2007

dear AC,
just as we were discussing these names sometime it is even more embarrassing as arvind is known as ara vindu and he is going mad at us for ridiculing so some names depict so many things, like rajanikant first named mandodhari but when he came to know all are calling mandu mandu he changed it so like wise whenever we name first we need to shorten it and find out what it could sound as, then name the children...sk

sunkan · Nov 27, 2007

dear pushpa,
we have a bujju in our house and at present he does not seem to mind hope he changes before he marries as his wife may not appreciate something like this...sk

ish_nalini · Nov 27, 2007

Dear Sunkan,
You put down in a interesting manner.I makes me to recall my old buddy "Lakshmi Narayanan,Shanmuga Priyan,Arul jothi",they wer called as "Lakshmi,Shanmuga priya!*?,Jothika"....That would be very funny to hear them calling so.Since they were very soft in nature they tolerated all those things.But still now I feel very bad for people who have names like this,No way they can change it except keeping nick names.One of my friend named "Velammal",She will cry if anyone made fun of her name.I come to know that that she was named after her grand ma for her remeberance..
Here even my story goes like this....When I born my dad named me Ishvarya "A famous name amoung today's youngsters " ,but my mom priorly predicted that guys would have call me "Isu variya"...There my dad kept a full stop for that decision and started searching for horoscope name ..Though I love my name NALINI still I bull with my mom for changing her decision,to satisfy my desire I have named myself in INDUSLADIES as ISH_NALINI.....So naan solla varuvathu enna vennil...Please address born babies(future grandma's) in latest names..