What's in a name?

Dear Cheeniya,

I remembered one more joke connected with names. Here it is.

Two people who are friends meet on the road. One is coughing continuously and the other is clutching his chest as he has a heart pain. Can you guess their names?. Well, the person coughing continously is called 'Aarokiasamy' and the person clutching his chest is called 'Irudayasami'.

Regards,

TDU

 

Reading the posts prompted me to write this.
Our family's last name is Narasimhan. My husband is called as Dr.Nara. For my elder daughter, the principal called her over the mike as "shish kabob":idontgetit: (maybe he had lunch just before.) with her first name. Otherwise nobody could have recognised it was her. From that day onwards her friends use that last name to tease her, which my daughter takes it in a lighter note. But for my other daughter, she is called by her last name by her friends as 'cinnamon'. As friends use the first name it is not hard for us to find out whom they are calling. As you would have noticed, both of them doesn't match with the original last name. We are guessing another 'food' name for our son who is in school.
Even my uncle told us that a person named Raghavan has changed his name into R.Ghavan after coming to US.
Sriniketan

 

Dear Sriniketan,

I enjoyed reading your post which brings out the difficulties faced with names by south indians especially coming to U.S as I am finding it now. What surprises me is even after several times asking me the correct pronunciation of my name they can't call me correctly. My maharashtrian friend Mr. Patki has changed his name to Mr. P. Atkinson.

Regards,

TDU

 

Must say that this thread has turned hilarious! Loved all the exchanges between Tamildownunder, Cheeniya sir and others! Had quite some laugh
Tamildownunder, you sure have told quite a few amusing anecdotes about names and their namesakes! I loved Mr Hyderabad's retort! And when Cheeniya touches the keys, what's to stop him from churning out amusing tales
I kept thinking that you are from down under, but looks like you are just here, only yonder! So, how did you collect the DU to your T?...
Keep going and likes of me will fill our portion of laughter per day.
Good show Thiyir Vadai sir)

L, Kamla

 

thank u cheeniya sir & tamildownunder for filling our IL time with laughter. great to have u TDU at chenniya's tea table.

here, in arabia, we have strange names like 'funksatn' and 'bundhyan'. surprisingly, the faces seen beside these names are not those of filipinos or indonesians, as one may expect! those are the distorted names of our gracious indians!

while making out Iqama(work permit) and related documents, the names are written in arabic; in this process, they undergo some transformation. while opening a bank account or having a medical insurance card, the names are taken from those documents and written in english- at this stage the names are completely distorted : poor venkatesans become funksatns and pandyans are to be bundhyans.

vaah! the end products never look like the raw material.

the reason is, the arabic alphabet has no letters to match 'v', 'p' and 'd'(as in delhi). 'f' replaces 'v' , though not a 'v'itting, sorry, 'f'itting replacement and 'b' is accepted for 'p'. hence, the confusion!

there must be a funny tale behind the choice of the name TDU- why not elaborate on this?

wishes,
shreyasri

 

Dear Kamala an Shreyasri,

Thanks for your appreciation and I thank Sri sir who inspires us through his thought-provoking, humourous writtings.

Regarding the selection of TDU as user name, yes I wanted to have a different name and since I am so fond of Tamil and since at the time of registration in this forum I was in Melbourne, Australia I added Downunder to Tamil. When I went through the Melbourne Museum I found to my surprise that some of the Australian aborigins were not only looking like Tamils but also were speaking Tamil. Later I came across some reports in the web about Australian tribes which confirmed that some of the tribes were from Tamil Nadu. I feel this gives credence to the theory of Ilamuria continent starting from Tamil Nadu and extending by land to Australia.

Regards,

TDU