One eternal question, I have had for my mom, how on earth did u manage to find an absolutely unheard of name for your only little one. Not that I hate it or something, thankfully it doesn't sound weird enough to help some mischievous prankster figure out a few outrageous puns. Just one problem , no data entry operator ever has got it right on the first mention. Small hassles, but still why ?.
But given the plethora of options available in our country , 24+ Jain tirthankaras or 330 million Hindu gods ( say half of them are male) or even one lakh word rich Kannada vocabulary, she managed to overlook. Neither google nor my mom has thus far been able to provide me a commonly accepted meaning for my name. Bengalis are known to coin names for their kids, starting with an idea in mind( a vivid description sort of thing) and then finding Sanskrit words to represent the idea and later joining them to form perhaps a unique, but easy to decipher name. like a Shubhpuspabrata Devdasgupta .. makes sense u see.
Many inspired moms of the 70s and early 80s named their children after their favourite film stars, sport stars, performers, writers. Not so long ago, I read that Lara Dutta's mom named her after a song in her favourite movie Dr. Zhivago. Three chottu cousins of mine, all born in 90s and all named Manisha, stand testimony to this trend. My mom defies this logic as well.
An interesting article i read a few years ago, talked about the most common baby names (boy & girl) for a particular year in UK. A nation crazed over the birth of celebrity children, started placing bets on the likely name of the still unborn baby of the first couple - Tony & Cherie Blair. The national statistics association of UK even publishes the most popular baby names each year. Sample this http://www.statistics.gov.uk/specials/babiesnames_boys.asp
If one were to conduct such a research in India, I would not be surprised. If you include all states north of the vindhyas, my guess on the most common boy name to be Rahul and most common girl name to be Neha. If my 550+ orkut friend list is considered a decent sample representation, the final leader tally for boys and girls is 12 Rahuls and 9 Neha. Thankfully, having studied in REC & IIM, I have interacted with a variety of people from across the country, so i have reason to have confidence in my research. As far as the south indian names are concerned, its a v v tough guess. But one thing for sure, if instead of considering the names, we include the meanings, I am sure Lord Shiva(mahesh,dinesh,suresh .. xxxesh) and Lord Vishnu ( 9 avatars & their alter egos) would top the leader board. As far as girl names in south are concerned, my observation is that they are named after beautiful adjectives. Soumya, Priya with many prefixes & suffixes, Ramya .. etc. Birth stars are another favourite for girl names, mostly coz of sweet soundedness,if not anything else.
Another aspect of a typical south indian kid's name is the I.N.I.T.I.A.L.S. Ranging from 3 - 4 letters in AP to just 1 for some lucky city kids. Sometimes I sorely miss the charm of introducing myself like a 'Hi, I am Rahul ..Rahul Malhotra'. How do you say that with initials ?? Hi I am Shreyan .. Shreyan ML .. weird huh. Now may be, my mom thought of this impending inconvenience, that she made sure that the first name is so unique that it would obviate the need for a surname. While ML, doesn't sound that bad, I have had batch mates and friends who had funny initials like WL, YK,PK. Its not surprise then, these friends ended up being remembered mostly by their initials rather than their names. While concept of initials as a unique primary key ( father's name + village) was acceptable for official usage, its usage never lasts beyond ur schooling. The passport, Pan Card or Voter ID inevitably expanded your initials and gave you a new moniker, which you might like or dislike based on how sweet sounding a name your village of origin had like a Sivakasi or a yerrawada .. whatever.
Now coming back to where I started, while I am still to figure out what the true meaning of my name is. I have found that that google/orkut lists at least 10 - 15 people with the same name as mine. Ting! .. then came the brainwave .. May be .. Its all the coz of a TYPO in this popular baby name book, that the gullible mothers of these 15 odd people, referred to in the quest of doing something different. you know, during those days, when you didn't have spellcheck in word or forget it word itself never existed. A typist might have inadvertently typed 'SHREYAS' as 'SHREYAN'.
But given the plethora of options available in our country , 24+ Jain tirthankaras or 330 million Hindu gods ( say half of them are male) or even one lakh word rich Kannada vocabulary, she managed to overlook. Neither google nor my mom has thus far been able to provide me a commonly accepted meaning for my name. Bengalis are known to coin names for their kids, starting with an idea in mind( a vivid description sort of thing) and then finding Sanskrit words to represent the idea and later joining them to form perhaps a unique, but easy to decipher name. like a Shubhpuspabrata Devdasgupta .. makes sense u see.
Many inspired moms of the 70s and early 80s named their children after their favourite film stars, sport stars, performers, writers. Not so long ago, I read that Lara Dutta's mom named her after a song in her favourite movie Dr. Zhivago. Three chottu cousins of mine, all born in 90s and all named Manisha, stand testimony to this trend. My mom defies this logic as well.
An interesting article i read a few years ago, talked about the most common baby names (boy & girl) for a particular year in UK. A nation crazed over the birth of celebrity children, started placing bets on the likely name of the still unborn baby of the first couple - Tony & Cherie Blair. The national statistics association of UK even publishes the most popular baby names each year. Sample this http://www.statistics.gov.uk/specials/babiesnames_boys.asp
If one were to conduct such a research in India, I would not be surprised. If you include all states north of the vindhyas, my guess on the most common boy name to be Rahul and most common girl name to be Neha. If my 550+ orkut friend list is considered a decent sample representation, the final leader tally for boys and girls is 12 Rahuls and 9 Neha. Thankfully, having studied in REC & IIM, I have interacted with a variety of people from across the country, so i have reason to have confidence in my research. As far as the south indian names are concerned, its a v v tough guess. But one thing for sure, if instead of considering the names, we include the meanings, I am sure Lord Shiva(mahesh,dinesh,suresh .. xxxesh) and Lord Vishnu ( 9 avatars & their alter egos) would top the leader board. As far as girl names in south are concerned, my observation is that they are named after beautiful adjectives. Soumya, Priya with many prefixes & suffixes, Ramya .. etc. Birth stars are another favourite for girl names, mostly coz of sweet soundedness,if not anything else.
Another aspect of a typical south indian kid's name is the I.N.I.T.I.A.L.S. Ranging from 3 - 4 letters in AP to just 1 for some lucky city kids. Sometimes I sorely miss the charm of introducing myself like a 'Hi, I am Rahul ..Rahul Malhotra'. How do you say that with initials ?? Hi I am Shreyan .. Shreyan ML .. weird huh. Now may be, my mom thought of this impending inconvenience, that she made sure that the first name is so unique that it would obviate the need for a surname. While ML, doesn't sound that bad, I have had batch mates and friends who had funny initials like WL, YK,PK. Its not surprise then, these friends ended up being remembered mostly by their initials rather than their names. While concept of initials as a unique primary key ( father's name + village) was acceptable for official usage, its usage never lasts beyond ur schooling. The passport, Pan Card or Voter ID inevitably expanded your initials and gave you a new moniker, which you might like or dislike based on how sweet sounding a name your village of origin had like a Sivakasi or a yerrawada .. whatever.
Now coming back to where I started, while I am still to figure out what the true meaning of my name is. I have found that that google/orkut lists at least 10 - 15 people with the same name as mine. Ting! .. then came the brainwave .. May be .. Its all the coz of a TYPO in this popular baby name book, that the gullible mothers of these 15 odd people, referred to in the quest of doing something different. you know, during those days, when you didn't have spellcheck in word or forget it word itself never existed. A typist might have inadvertently typed 'SHREYAS' as 'SHREYAN'.
lol... I agree with the "Sometimes I sorely miss the charm of introducing myself like a 'Hi, I am Rahul ..Rahul Malhotra'. How do you say that with initials ?? Hi I am Shreyan .. Shreyan ML .. wierd huh."
ReplyDeleteYou may refer to a Bengali dictionary. You will find Shreyan is derived from Sheya + yan = blessed, or benevolent. Hope it helps.
ReplyDelete