The Name Blame

Is one ever really happy with the name given by one's parents? I don't think so, as I have learned from experience and encounters with countless others. Many of us are disgruntled with our parents for saddling us with a name we abhor for very many reasons. Very few of us are satisfied with the name that was assigned to us at birth, and at some point in life, most of us wish we could've been given a more exotic sounding name, or an uncommon name, or a name that didn't draw so much attention to us while we were growing up. Most of us, then again, reconcile ourselves to our names as we grow older, and come to accept it, while some others take matters into their own hands and change their names legally while they can do so. "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet," says Shakespeare's Juliet. While acknowledging the verity of the bard's query and its meaning, it cannot, however, be denied that some would love to have a name they personally prefer, and generally blame their parents for whatever name they have been given.

I was named after Shakespeare's heroine in "Twelfth Night", Olivia being a very, very uncommon name in smalltown Madurai, India, of the sixties. My sister and I had an English name and a Tamil name, and my father being from Tanjore, the Chozha stronghold in history, we were named after the Chozha princesses. Thus, my sister was named Millicent Vandarkuzhali, and I was Olivia Punguzhali. My brothers had the names of Roman emperors for their first names, all because my Dad was a history buff, followed by a Biblical name, and then a Chozha king's name - so it was Julius Paul Karikalan, and Claudius David Kulothungan! What a mouthful! We called them Rajan and Babu at home though. And the irony of ironies was that the clerk at my second brother's school misspelled his first name as Gladius in his school leaving certificate, so Gladius it has been since then!

While everyone around me thought my name was beautiful, I didn't because I thought my name stood out among all those Tamil, Indian names around me. I just wanted to belong with everyone else at school. Why couldn't I have been named Chitra or Meena or Kamala, I thought! There I was, this little, brown-skinned girl with an uncommon English name as Olivia, and what an incongruous Tamil name, Punguzhali, to go with it, I thought! I decided then that I would give my child a typical Indian name and not make him or her feel out of place while growing up. Also, I was listed way down below on the class list that was made out in alphabetical order, and just because my name started with an O, it meant when I took an exam from school to university, the examiner would grade my paper much later than the others' in my class. In fact, I was the only student at school then, whose name started with an O.

So it was when I got married that I promptly dropped my Tamil name, and took on my husband's as a last name. By then acceptance of my first name had slowly set in, and so I was OK with Olivia Kanna now. Little did I realize then that I would be moving to North America and settle down there for good. Olivia is a very popular girl's name here, and just imagine how the Americans, Canadians, and my international students and friends would've massacred my Tamil name, had I continued to have it! I'm at peace now with my name, mercifully at last! Not so my son! True to my earlier vow, we named our son Dinesh, a typical Indian name with its origin in Sanskrit, meaning "Lord of the Day" or in other words, the Sun. The name chosen by my father-in-law seemed appropriate because this baby was the light of our lives, the centre of our solar system, with the rest of us revolving around him like the other planets!

When Dinesh was 1 year old, we moved to California. Now HE thinks HIS NAME sticks out like a sore thumb! He came back from his Grade 1 class one day and vehemently posed the question, " Mom, why did you name me Dinesh? Couldn't you have named me Matthew, or Sean, or Kevin? I hate my name!" So there you go, my friends! Is anyone at all happy with their given names? I doubt it very much. And the name blame continues to this day! SIGH!!!