What is there in a name? After all it's just a name. Don’t you agree? Definitely I would not.
In the epic Srimad Bhagavatha , there was a guy called Ajaameeyudu. Although he was born and bought up righteously, at one point of time in his life, he got used to bad habits of all kind ; divorced his rightful wife, marries a prostitute, gets four sons with her , does not look after his parents and all in all everything bad. The only good thing he did was to name his second son he got with the prostitute as Narayana. After a few years when he approaches death out of affection on his second son , he kept on calling him quite frequently. After his death he was taken to heaven instead of hell. The reason given for this was because he chanted Narayana (although it is his second son name) on his death bed. So only he is given a place in heaven.
The above story clearly tells why elders earlier use to name their sons and daughter with God, Goddess names. Atleast by calling their son or daughter they can chant the name of God.
Now-a-days it is more of variety. Parents are struggling quite hard to name their kids. It is much more painful task for the parents than to give birth to the kid. I remember one of the kid’s nick name(short name used in general by parents and siblings at home) is “Hutch”. You call your kid Hutch tooch. So whenever someone sneezes your kid will ask “did you call me ?”.
One more incident I heard was the kid being named Dhoorth. The parents were very happy that their son name is unique and never heard ever. It is only when his parents got to know the actual meaning they changed their son name. By the way Dhoortha means sinster in Sanskrit.
The only reason for these kind of names are parents more and more opting for variety and uniqueness. And the main problem is ignorance combined with belief in numerology or horoscope. Parents keep on referring some nonsense websites and forums which fill their databases with all 26 Combination 26(26!) names. One acquaintance asked me to suggest a name starting with S for his new born daughter. I suggested him straight way go for “Seetha”. He replies me no man I cannot do that because people with name “Seetha” are expected to face the same troubles as mother Seetha from Ramayana. This is what I call peaks of ignorance. Trust me you should proud to have been named as Seetha. I would repeat and everyone who understood Ramayana would agree to the fact that Ramayana did not become epic because of Rama. Ramayana only became epic because of my mother Seetha’s CHARACTER.
More funny to add are few people get so obsessed with their names and they name their kids with their own name or a combination of letters from both parent’s names.
On the flip side I know a few parents who name their kids with all the possible God and Goddess names they know of . The name length crosses the limit of String type in computer programming. Instead of calling their son with the complete name they select few characters from each word and adopt it as a pet name to their kid. One of such names a family nick named their kid as “Maraka” (meaning stain in telugu)
There is nothing written with in this blog for fun. If you are one among those who don’t know meaning of your kid’s name first check it and then name your kid. If variety is so important then you can name your kid by using Random function in Java or any other computer programming languages. They pick up randomly a set of letters which are rarely repetitive. So your kid for sure will have the best unique name possible.
Before questioning why should you follow whatever elders or wise men said first check the reason why did they ask you do ?
Bye bye .. Happy naming
Viswanath Malladi
