The Real Things To Think About When You Are Naming Your Child In India

I don’t know about you and your baby, but I spent most of my pregnancy referring to BabyKoo as “it”. With all the backache and nausea, I really didn’t have the inclination to read up names or Google the Hebrew word for beautiful. I also considered it bad luck to count my chicken before it hatched.

But once she hatched, I had no choice. You see, people dropping in to visit the newborn are often unknowing catalysts to the naming of a baby, what with their good-natured prodding and suggestions on preferred letters, consonants, goddesses and planets. So I swore to myself that before Gogol’s mom peeped in from next door to say hi (again) and tsked-tsked away at my baby’s nameless existence, I would find something suitable.

Hah!- easier said than done. When you have spent five years in law school learning the art of asking questions, and five more at a job that teaches you how to artfully not answer them, taking an irreversible decision becomes a craft well learnt, to be savoured and preceded by copious reading, quick nimble-fingered research and of course, empirical assessment of market practice.

Also, having grown up in Bengal, I realised rather late in life that I find nothing disturbing about odd, complex names. It was only in college when I saw people struggling to pronounce Saptarshi and not understanding that Sudipta was a unisex name, did I realise how frighteningly benign I was to strange, social-outcast names.

So my compulsive need to research, fuelled by my fear of not being able to spot oddities in names (believe me, I’m married to the strangest name I know)  yielded some interesting results, which I share with you today:

Don’t read the Baby Name books: They are obnoxious, misleading and a waste of time. I first picked up the most popular name book in India and found, listed under P, the name pisacha with its meaning (demon, ghost) staring right back at me. Don’t believe me, check it out for yourself. Stick instead, to interesting names you’ve come across in books, people you’ve met, local Indian languages and dialects, etc.

Google the ‘playground test’: It’s actually meant for Indians who emigrate and think that naming their children Bedabroto or Kanakalakshmi is a perfectly acceptable way to hold on to their roots. Whilst most of this test is common sense brought together under a catchy moniker, you’ll be surprised as to how many people really need to read it.

Very simply, it asks you to imagine shouting out that name in a playground full of kids (a playground your kid is likely to grow up in, not where you played 20 years ago) and imagine their reaction. If you do this right and think it through to its logical end, i.e, life long arguments and compounding factor for teenage angst, it should eliminate any sudden urge you may feel to pay obeisance to your grandparents or ancestral village. Unfortunately, this test compelled me to eliminate my most favourite names ever- Mrinalini and Kadambari. Sigh.

Think of the initials: There was a girl in my class called Anwesha Sen Sharma. Yes, it was horrible.

Anagrams, anagrams: I will rest my case with one simple, life changing example. My husband went to school with a boy called Agniva. In Class 7, some kid realised what that name could be scrambled into. He was never called Agniva by anyone again. 20 years to this date. Will let you work that one out.

Surname quandaries: This is going to be a part of the name as well and we usually tend the forget that. Surnames have their own unique set of woes- too long, too short, weird and prone to distortion, etc etc.

If the surname is unusually long, keep the name short and sweet. If you’re lucky to be working around a Roy or a Rao, let your imagination run wild, although learn where to draw the line please. Sometimes Indian names take up all the little boxes in a passport form. Please avoid that.

There are some surnames that are, well, embarrassing or silly sounding. whatever it may be, deal with it smartly and with grace. There is always a way to make it sound nicer. But if your surname is Lele or Pushkarna and you’ve already named your child Bosky or Anal, leave this country. Now.

Sometimes leaving the country is not enough either, like Mr and Mrs Ganda found out when they got their son’s birth certificate and realised that it read- Mr. Yug Ganda.

And then there is this fad, merging surnames, a pet peeve of mine. I really don’t know why it’s become such a symbol of equality. Imagine what would happen if two kids with two surnames, each grew up to marry each other and continued the same tradition with their progeny?  And then the people after them? If you really do want to add surnames of both parents, please do it aesthetically (maybe placed as a middle name or an initial), not with a misplaced sense of matriarchy. Your child or grandchild should not have to grow up wondering why he has a law firm trailing his first name.

Amazing new-age God names: If God names are really your thing, you will be amazed at the number of cool names our Gods have. Saints and priests, for all their upper caste shoo-Shaa, definitely left you with a treasure trove to use. So dig out your shloka books and give them a good read. You will realise that Saraswati can be called Ira instead, Veer is a would-have-been Hanuman and Lakshmi can become Rea.

Celeb alert: Very very important in India, because it’s a sitting duck and highly avoidable. If your family has the same surname as a celebrity (say, Singh or Dixit) please refrain from naming your child Ranveer or Madhuri. If someone becomes a celebrity after your kid has been named, that’s just unfortunate and very bad luck. But there is no excuse for the Chakrabortys to have named their son Mithun in 1986, none at all.

Keep a nickname: This is a very personal decision and no, my support for it is not a Calcutta hangover. To me, a nickname is an amazing part of your childhood; silly, naughty and carefree, all rolled into a few syllables of mostly onomatopoeic nonsense. You may argue that your childhood can be enjoyed regardless, but a nickname lends credence to the Chinese walls in your life, completing the demarcation between Inside-Outside and the two personas that you will inevitably build at each end. It’s your grandmom yelling at you for running on the terrace, the neighbourhood kids cheering as you chase the ball, your nanny coaxing you to eat more and your mother gritting her teeth, asking you to hang up. As you grow older, it harks back to memories of simpler, easier times, so no matter how fancy your car or how amazeballs your bonus, you’re just a ear-tug and a nickname away from remembering who you really are.

All done? Checked the boxes above? Now, based on the above, make a shortlist of 6 names. Write them on tiny little clean scraps of paper, fold them and scatter them in your child’s crib. Wait for him to flail his arms and legs and touch one such chit (spitting or throwing up on chit is not counted). Pick that one up and read it out loud. Record the whole event on your camcorder.

Your child is hereby christened and you are not to blame. He has successfully chosen his name himself.

P.S. Special tip to Bengalis from my husband. A is for Apple, A is not for Orange.

This post initially appeared on the author’s blog Where is my Mommy Going, and has been edited and adapted for the purposes of Kidsstoppress.

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