When Cliff Richard still belted out of the radio on Friday night at 8 pm, when most "listeners" seemed to live in a place called Perambur and had names like Ryan Gosforth, Arnold Smith, Kenneth Barrington, Leslie Ann Jones etc etc who vaguely referred to some distant unseen place as "back home", names had a ring to them. Including the ones from Perambur, Pallavaram, Royapuram, Egmore, and St Thomas Mount. Which were all western, or in the local parlance, "English" names (at times also known as "European" for, names like Roque D'Souza and Alfonso Albuquerque hardly sounded "English" and were vaguely Iberian). Much to my personal consternation and to the detriment of multiculturalism in this City, most of the denizens of the aforementioned locales have gone to greener pastures; and some, no doubt, to the damp, dank and cold "back home".
But the ones for whom this is "back home" are the ones I am concerned with here. And indeed it is a matter of concern what they are called now. We had Amrtihavarshinis, evoking images of a rain of divine nectar; and Tripurasundari, which of course is the great beauty of The Heaven, The Earth and Hell combined. (why one needs to reference a beauty to the women of hell, beats me. I would assume they were all uniformly ugly in addition to being of a despicable and disagreeable disposition. But on the other hand, our forefathers knew a thing or two perhaps - good girls went to heaven but they usually had mustaches. Hell is where the bad ones went because they had the looks to be bad....But I digress.). And we had Meenakshis, Kamakshis and the like where we now have Sonakshis.
Then there was a period when names began to "modernize". That is, we had names with "Jaya" or "Jai" prefixed to perfectly traditional and adequate names, prompting that great Chennai gadfly, Cho. Ramaswamy to remark that his maid Muniamma went home one day and returned the next morning as Jaimuniamma. This phase was followed by the prefix changing to "Vijay" or "Vijaya". For some reason these changes seemed to apply more to women than men. Did the parents believe that men were less in need of a makeover? Or that women were in greater need? Whatever the reason, the whole effect was magical. We suddenly had prefixes to traditional names, evocative of Victory and victoriousness if there's such a thing.
But there's a fly in the ointment. Important though victory and references to it in ones name are, it is not as important as being the Teacher's Pet in the class room. In America and elsewhere being Teacher's Pet may earn you some opprobrium and worse among your peers, but in Chennai it was a Good Thing and almost an Unmixed Blessing. And how do you become the Teacher's Pet? This is where the parents came in. It was believed that by naming your child with a name beginning with the letter A, he/she would be on top of the roll call at school and was more likely to be familiar to the Teacher. He / she was also more likely to be picked for various tasks, mostly unpleasant, but no pain, no gain.We Madrasis were the original Calvinists. We would have invented Calvinism had John Calvin not been born a Christian in France- of course he would have been known as Pasumpon Muthuramakrishna Tamizhvanan and the movement would have been known as Pasumpon Muthuramkrishna Tamizhvananism and the world would have had to wait five hundred years more for P...M...T...ism. But I digress, again.
Through the aforemntioned trick of endowing your child with a name beginning with A you kinda gave him / her a leg up in life as early as age 3 which is when we generally sent kids to school in Madras ie Chennai - we are a people of academic bent (some might simply say bent). More on that later. I myself am guilty of naming my children A.... and A..... One of whom went on to marry an A...(we certainly did not require her to choose a person whose name began with A, it was coincidental, believe you me. Now we are a Triple A family.).
We never found out if my daughter or son became Teacher's Pet - we were gone from here before they could reap the benefit of this thoughtful act on the part of their parents. Unfortunately A(+7 more letters) M(+11 more) which was my daughter's full name then was not an easy one to say in England. She never ended up being the Teachers Pet. She didn't get bullied in the playground either.
Now we have names like Shilka, Roshina, Rozina, Pinerna, Linita, Nosh, Ziorta, Leepika, Jebin, Simbu etc etc. They are all true names picked out from Chennai Times page 3. What are these, pray? Do they mean anything? Is there a purpose behind these names? Some recall a cartoon lion, and some others are slang for food. What will Maneka Gandhi say about them? Will she even acknowledge them as Indian?
Trilokanarayani please come back.
But the ones for whom this is "back home" are the ones I am concerned with here. And indeed it is a matter of concern what they are called now. We had Amrtihavarshinis, evoking images of a rain of divine nectar; and Tripurasundari, which of course is the great beauty of The Heaven, The Earth and Hell combined. (why one needs to reference a beauty to the women of hell, beats me. I would assume they were all uniformly ugly in addition to being of a despicable and disagreeable disposition. But on the other hand, our forefathers knew a thing or two perhaps - good girls went to heaven but they usually had mustaches. Hell is where the bad ones went because they had the looks to be bad....But I digress.). And we had Meenakshis, Kamakshis and the like where we now have Sonakshis.
Then there was a period when names began to "modernize". That is, we had names with "Jaya" or "Jai" prefixed to perfectly traditional and adequate names, prompting that great Chennai gadfly, Cho. Ramaswamy to remark that his maid Muniamma went home one day and returned the next morning as Jaimuniamma. This phase was followed by the prefix changing to "Vijay" or "Vijaya". For some reason these changes seemed to apply more to women than men. Did the parents believe that men were less in need of a makeover? Or that women were in greater need? Whatever the reason, the whole effect was magical. We suddenly had prefixes to traditional names, evocative of Victory and victoriousness if there's such a thing.
But there's a fly in the ointment. Important though victory and references to it in ones name are, it is not as important as being the Teacher's Pet in the class room. In America and elsewhere being Teacher's Pet may earn you some opprobrium and worse among your peers, but in Chennai it was a Good Thing and almost an Unmixed Blessing. And how do you become the Teacher's Pet? This is where the parents came in. It was believed that by naming your child with a name beginning with the letter A, he/she would be on top of the roll call at school and was more likely to be familiar to the Teacher. He / she was also more likely to be picked for various tasks, mostly unpleasant, but no pain, no gain.We Madrasis were the original Calvinists. We would have invented Calvinism had John Calvin not been born a Christian in France- of course he would have been known as Pasumpon Muthuramakrishna Tamizhvanan and the movement would have been known as Pasumpon Muthuramkrishna Tamizhvananism and the world would have had to wait five hundred years more for P...M...T...ism. But I digress, again.
Through the aforemntioned trick of endowing your child with a name beginning with A you kinda gave him / her a leg up in life as early as age 3 which is when we generally sent kids to school in Madras ie Chennai - we are a people of academic bent (some might simply say bent). More on that later. I myself am guilty of naming my children A.... and A..... One of whom went on to marry an A...(we certainly did not require her to choose a person whose name began with A, it was coincidental, believe you me. Now we are a Triple A family.).
We never found out if my daughter or son became Teacher's Pet - we were gone from here before they could reap the benefit of this thoughtful act on the part of their parents. Unfortunately A(+7 more letters) M(+11 more) which was my daughter's full name then was not an easy one to say in England. She never ended up being the Teachers Pet. She didn't get bullied in the playground either.
Now we have names like Shilka, Roshina, Rozina, Pinerna, Linita, Nosh, Ziorta, Leepika, Jebin, Simbu etc etc. They are all true names picked out from Chennai Times page 3. What are these, pray? Do they mean anything? Is there a purpose behind these names? Some recall a cartoon lion, and some others are slang for food. What will Maneka Gandhi say about them? Will she even acknowledge them as Indian?
Trilokanarayani please come back.
I think if you repeat the term "Pasumpon Muthuramakrishna Tamizhvanan" enough times, perhaps with some doctor-hood or other thalaivar references, it will swiftly pick up as a hip and relevant concept, and then you can write a book about it. I will definitely buy it!
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