What is in a name?

When a child is born, it is the most important moment in every parent’s life. Sometimes, in excitement parents sometimes go overboard and give very strange, weird and funny names to their children and they have to live with it for the rest of their lives!

There is a shop in our small town and it has this name: Jharu Mal Kura Chand & sons. For those who may not know the meaning of these names, Jharu is a broom and Kura is garbage, while Mal and Chand are just suffixes to these names. Having lived in a home with gardens, my family often hired gardeners to tend to the heavy work around the garden. I saw that many, or almost all of these gardeners had very strange names –for instance one was called Mata Badal (change your mom, yes I am serious, that’s what it means!), Baskari- this is an interesting one-it seems that this man’s mom had a baby almost each year, totaling to over a dozen, so her mother- in- law said, “it’s enough!” – meaning Bas Kari, so that was the name of this poor man. Another name is Peration, it is so bizarre that this name came about because she was born out of a cesarean section, so operation became Peration! In villages child mortality was very high so names given were such that no one cast an evil eyes on them so names like Chor – thief, Bhootra-ghostly, came about.

Then there are names very popular in the northern part of India, Lucky, Lovely, Prince. Believe me, they are all real people – Lucky is our very favourite driver who takes us around and has an burning desire to learn English and go to Canada (pronounced as Ken ae da). Lovely is another taxi stand owner where Lucky works, and Prince is another strapping young man who is the son of our car Mechanic – Kitty, (yes, a funny name too!). He has major aspirations to go to
Ken ae da. There are more such unbelievable names like – Dolly, Sweety, Baby, Baba, Pinky and so many more.

Now there are a few friends who really want to embarrass their kids with names like Ripon- after the Governor General and Viceroy of India – and this is the young girl’s name! Another friend has named his daughter - India, we all have realized that he is a great patriot but to name a child with the name of your country is taking it too far!!  One more name – Generail Singh, parents who wanted their son to become a General in the army!

There are very funny dog names as well. I think it does deserve another post. So look out for these strange names and mail some really unlikely ones soon.