Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Does your name define you?

Vanity has reached new heights with people starting to give 'stylish' names to their children, moving away from tradition where you could identify the area and culture of a person, given the name. Conversely, this only shows that people are in a way ashamed or their roots and want their children to be someone they wanted to be but ‘could not’ be. I come across few Tamil children with Tamil names, with a good majority scouring the Internet for ‘fancy’ names and complex meanings.

My name was judged upon recently and the mere mention of my name had instilled doubts on whether I could speak English. To be frank, yes, my spoken English was never any good until I had been to Singapore but that was the case across my school for everyone who had not read anything more than Hardy boys and Nancy Drew along with Archies and Tin-tin. There was a time I had to seek my friend’s help to talk to a counsellor just because I was not confident about my verbal skills. But then, the situation is a lot better now and that’s not because I had changed my name is it? I had my circumstances and my good friend Rajiv to thank for that.

What irks me is that this is not the late 80’s and early 90’s where the people from the South aped the people from the North and people from the North wanted to be ‘Americans’ with all their first names becoming Christian names, this is the era where ‘on-site’ opportunities has enabled everyone to roam the world and by now people should realized the people that we pray to actually spend half the time and money in getting darker and spending their holidays in ‘exotic’ India and the other Asian countries. Seriously, to an outsider (Non-Indian) what difference does the name ‘Shanmuga’ and ‘Deepak’ make? Zilch! Both are names that they can’t relate to anyway. So its just us who has a problem and its time we grew up and not generalize. A ‘Subbulakshmi’ can wear a short skirt and can have an American accent, she does not have to change her name, and all she has to do is join a call centre!

If you think that who you are is a disadvantage, prove yourself and set it right, do something great and your name, whatever it is, will relate to greatness and will be ‘cool’. Remember it’s the underdog that the world roots for, not the favourites

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe the trend of 'deculturating' children's names is an evolutionary step in the right direction for people. Perhaps identification to a particular area, heritage or cultural tradition is no longer as useful, in our increasingly global world, as it used to be. It doesn't matter if you're from india or uzbekistan now, the problems we face are more global. Identification based on tradition, race and nationality have served its purpose in the past, and now we are reaching a new time where that identification will lead to more difficulties than advantages. This may be the start of a necessary movement toward a world of greater acceptance, less identification with the false, and one where you can say your race is 'human'.

what do you think...?

Shanmuga Kumar said...

Assumptions that I don’t agree with
1. ‘Deculturating’ is good
2. ‘evolutionary step in the right direction’ – Says who?
3. I don’t think a name is going to fix global problems, a name like ‘tia’ will not reduce the carbon footprint or help fight terrorism.
4. greater acceptance, less identification with the false – I have a problem with the word ‘false’ in the sentence.. we are what we are, there is nothing false about it. Trying to ‘be’ someone else is the false bit, especially trying to blame it on the name for being a failure or a loser.

In an increasingly global world, it’s more important we maintain our distinction; after all we are all not sheep. The thing is with names, there is no benchmark, its vanity that makes people take up ‘other’ identities. The Chinese stick to their roots and community in spite of having migrated to every nook and corner of this globe. Acceptance is very different from change. Being mindful of your roots and being proud of it has nothing to do with treating someone else badly or assuming to be superior to everyone else. Being a Hindu, I think the Christians and Muslims are just taking a different road to me to the same destination, following the same guidelines worded differently.

Being human has nothing to do with names, its about who we are as a person irrespective of the name. What happens on my wedding day is not dependent on my name but the choices I make and so will be my life!

D. Ram said...

.. but all the Chinese & Indians changed their names when they moved to North America

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