Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Indian Names

Indians generally name their kids after their grandfather/grandmother/father/mother name or choose from god/ goddesses names as if they are their first close relatives!!!!
I personally feel having "Family Names" is a good concept as we can always track down our family tree…but now with the great influence of western culture and always having jobs away from home town, joint families and family get-togethers are a rare happening. I wish the concept of "Family" at least remains in long run. The great boon of Indians is their family values and traditions and this generation should understand the value addition of these and follow that rather getting influenced by just seeing the convenient part of western culture
In this IT era, our interaction with foreigners has increased a lot. It is a great challenge for me to pronounce a Chinese name properly and even few Indian names are tongue – twisters for foreigners. Here is what happens when the name is really long…..
An Indian guy named "Anantharaman Subbaraman" arrived at the New York airport and ended up waiting for his visa for about 2 hours for the authorities to call his name. He got fed up and went to them and asked why they haven’t called his name yet.
They said that they have been calling him for the last 2 hours as "Anotherman Superman"
Another example is the name of my spouse and brother. They have the same name Venkata Subramanian. I know by now both of them are so fed up with their long names. The space would not be enough in any form if they were to write their names with surname which is Venkata Subramanian Nagarajan(29 chars) and Venkata Subramanian Krishnamoorthy(34 chars)….oooffff even I need an energy drink now. :) Could you guess how many names you can form out of this name? Venkat, Venkata, venky, subu, mani, manian, venkatesh, venkatesa and recently nsubrama has joined the list which really sounds so funny…moreover with this name there is always a confusion of middle name and you have to give a detailed explanation of how to spell and call your name….
So future Indian parents please keep short and sweet names to your kids…:)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could you guess how many names you can form out of this name? Venkat, Venkata, ...

to add some more from experience..
Vengaaa (Singapore)
VS(or veeyes)(college)
subra
vsmani
gatabuta subramanian

ven..kaa..taaa..s...u..bbbbb (you would usually hear up to that and get up and walk towards the caller before he/she butchers the name..or in a good intention of giving a relief to the caller from extraordinary stress..And always watch out for the facial expression..it would indicate "oh thank god..you are already here..I would have never completed that name" :) )

by the way, now I say my name is
venkat (pronounced as WHEN-CAT)

its actually easier than names like SVYATOPOLK and LYUBOCHKA :)


but if there is someone I am always jealous abt then that must be CHinese..

its always 2 or 3 alphabets in their last name..
lu or lui or liu or lee or xu or zhu or Min or hua or hu or....

some ppl do know how to make things simple :)

Anonymous said...

and ...

I know someone who actually has a longer name than me..
Michael Benedict xavier sahayaraj prabhu (40 chars)

but he is lucky that it was shortened in all documents (official) name to MBX (the only guy I know who has 3-4 initials) :)

Anonymous said...

Keeping Indian name to our children is our culture... why do we need to go for westernization in everything... If they can't pronounce our names, thatz their problem... Let them learn our culture first...

-- A proud Indian !!!!

Anonymous said...

Interesting thought.And from a name like "Anantharaman Subbaraman" what does anyone learn about culture?

we shouldn't be conversing in English if we are so against Westernization..How many of us can really talk/speak/understand Sanskrit?


I 'm seriously curious

Anonymous said...

hi, new to the site, thanks.