What's in a name?

“Shrinkage”

Seven years back one of my close friends Bharathkumar Leelakrishnan got his first job in a Fortune 100 company. Now nobody advised him such, but on the first day, struck by a brainwave he decided to introduce himself to his manager as “Brett Lee”, only one of the premier fast bowlers Australia has produced. Positively shocking, considering it was from a chap who cared for cricket as much as say… curling. A far worse travesty than claiming that he was the son of the Indian President or he was composing a symphony over the weekends. I could so imagine myself snapping at some guy, who jaywalked to me at work and said,

“Hi! I’m Brett Lee. Can I have a database extract?”

“Oh yeah? I’m Shane Warne. I bowl leg spin. I don’t do no extracts. Bainchoth!”

Perhaps I’d have renounced the expletive at the end but my indignation would’ve simmered. Agreed it isn’t a pretty sight watching your colleagues squirm and go through muscle spasms when attempting to pronounce your first and/or last names,

“How do you say this? Leeeee…laaa…kreeshh…naan?”

Dude! It’s just a #$%^in’ name. You don’t have to act like you’re having a heart attack!

but then what else’s a man’s got to do except grin and bear, right? Especially when your dad’s gone all creative cramming his village’s name (and other irrelevant details) into yours. Unless you’re one of them fortunate ones who’s blessed with a first name like Joseph/Robert/Bala that naturally lend themselves to an easy-on-the-lips Joe/Bob/Bala/Balki you don’t got no business shrinking them to something that makes no sense. If nothing, that’ll at least ensure simpletons like me don’t get their hopes up when their barren-than-the-rocks development team gets an email from “Janet” only to realize later that it’s none other than plain Jane Janaki. That too from the same borough as mine!

“Paging Dr. E”

“Janet”s and “Harry”s aside, pray, what on earth does someone do when he’s been bestowed with a name like Ehiyoruonahmenh Oghagboun. Let’s find out now…

While I’m not exactly splitting the atom at work, one of my many requirements is to moonlight as an administrator, which means I’m involuntarily copied on close to a hundred emails a day on servers being restarted, releases installed and patches applied on systems that I didn’t even know neither existed nor cared for in the first place. Even though I’m itching to shoot of a response like “About $%^&in’ time” to at least one of those emails, my reaction has always been passive. Select then en masse and dump them onto my Outlook trash. I would’ve done so that day except an email from Ehiyoruonahmenh Oghagboun caused me to sit up to rapt attention. No, he wasn’t our new CEO taking over our company. Simply put, yet another administrator like me who was going to install the latest Microsoft OS patches on some VM servers. At 6pm MST.

“Ehiyor…” I tried valiantly pronouncing his first name for a minute before I started howling “What a #$%^in’ tragedy”. Blame it on the extra caffeine or diet cokes but I felt a sudden dose of impunity creep through my veins and declared that I was going to hear him say his name. Which I wasn’t sure how, since E didn’t leave no contact information in his email. Perhaps to shield himself from specimens like me, I surmised as I tried calling the Data Center who were equally clueless. Would I like to page the Tier 1 Escalation Support? Sure. Let’s wake up the President if we need to! That proved to be the trick and less than a minute later I heard E’s cell phone ringing sending a tingle through my bones. The same reaction that’d net when one’s managed to track down their high school flame after a decade. Just saying...

“Hi! This is Ehiyoruonahmenh” No cuts, no chops, just like it was spelt, except it was rattled off faster than a bullet train that I couldn’t figure out a darn syllable. Could I manage to hear it one more time?

“Hi! Can I please speak with Ehioru…?” I started off slow, soft and sincere as if asking him for a loan.

“This is he.”

Oh no! “I got your email about the MS patches on the VM servers. Will they cause any downtime in RIO?” Obviously I wasn’t calling him for a dinner date. I had to cook up something and was lying through my teeth praying my giggling wasn’t too apparent.

“No.”

E’s forte wasn’t small talk. E was also not going to address himself in the third person anymore during the call. I’d got the response I wanted, thanked him and hung up.

“Ehiyoruonahmenh” So that’s how it was said. Maybe over a beer or two he’d throw some light on his name while I’d pat him with “Great job! Holding your ground and all”…

“What do I call my baby doll?”

It was just another day at the gym and I was sweating it out like a pig on the StairMaster conducting my nightly battle against the bulge. Someday I dream of a physique carved out of oak but… never mind. Right in the midst of one of Deva’s gana songs my phone rang rudely interrupting me at the 30 minute mark.

“Her family wants me to name her Shanthi Bala. What do I do?” screamed my friend Prashant Kumar into the earpiece. The first “her” was his wife and the second was the baby girl they were expecting in a couple of months. Lately the task of finding a perfect name for his girl was having him in knots.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know! Their family astrologer said that was a lucky name” I could feel his irritation throwing a vase or something across the room anytime now.

“That’s bullshit man!” I snapped causing me to miss a step and almost topple over. “That’ll never stick. Don’t worry!” I comforted him before reminding him that I had 15 more minutes of hell to suffer through and I’d talk to him later. I wasn’t entirely sold on my reassurance but “Shanthi Bala”? Puh-lease! No way was that going to stick.

Now I love dishing out “life truths” at the drop of a hat and here’s one more from my stable (after my heart rate returned to normal and I’d caught my breath back). The worst thing you can do as a Dad to your kids is not cutting them out of their trust fund. Rather ordain them with a name that’s so uncool that he/she shall be cursing you all the way through teenage.

Case in point: à la Deivasigamani and Kumudavalli. Agreed, these two names are dripping in divinity and probably paying homage to half a dozen Hindu Gods. But let’s take a deep breath and analyze these headlines, first for him,

“Deivasigamani, Casanova of the Eastern World ushers in the new year with a wild party in his swank 300ft yacht. Host snapped with topless Miss USA, Miss Venezuela and Miss Puerto Rico.”

“Sparkling point guard Deivasigamani scores 30 pts dishes 14 assists and shreds the Lakers defense in comeback victory. Starting gig is certainly his!”

“Dr. Deivasigamani, professor of Computer Science at SUNY wins ‘Researcher of the Year’ from Intel for his contribution to Wireless Sensor Networks.”

and then for her,

“Kumudavalli graces Sports Illustrated 2012 cover with Chanel’s new summer bikini line”

“’Yay! I’m getting married!’ An ecstatic Kumudavalli at Beverly Hills with George Clooney showing off her thick engagement rock”

“Noted Obstetrics & Gynecology surgeon Dr. Kumudavalli to address AIIMS class of ’13 today in New Delhi”

Hand to heart, which one of these did you naturally gravitate towards? And how much of that was influenced by the name? C’mon man! Humor me please, will ya?

In my humble opinion with a name like this you can’t go around in tuxedos saying “shaken… not stirred” without sounding unintentionally funny (Ok! Maybe if you shrink it to “Daniel”, but still got to lose the “Mani”) nor sashay on runways to Chanel or Versace. In the same breath, not dribble a basketball between your legs and throw no-look passes nor sleep with Matt Damon. But before you go ballistic and all preachy on me, note that I’m not mocking them or their kind or much worse, consigning them to be bottom feeders. No sir! Definitely not. Humble and respectful all over again, I’d like to note you’re more likely to encounter his publications when browsing through IEEE journals or rush to photocopy his latest textbook on the eve of your semester exams. Just like newly minted mothers all over the country will be tom-toming to their counterparts “Oh! We managed to get an appointment with Dr. Kumudavalli after 6 months”.

Fate isn’t a cruel mistress after all. Three months later I became the proud Godfather of “Manasa”, a cute bubbly bundle-of-joy with a million dollar smile. “Santhi Bala”, “Annai Abirami”, “Krishnaveni” and their ilk thankfully never saw the light of the day. Unless of course, Prashant Kumar’s in-laws were thinking of theatre names in Chennai!

“The Prasanna Situation”

And speaking of names designed to throw you off kilter, here’s an intriguing tale from the memory bank. Confusing names and confounding sexes never got better…

It was one of those bleak dreary Monday mornings when I was trying in vain to savor every minute of sleep before the alarm started howling intent on jerking me into consciousness and dragging me back into reality, when my dad called me out of the blue and said something to the effect of,

“Son! Her name’s Prasanna. Here’s the email address. You better get on you’re a** and contact her right away!”

Of course, Dad never sounds like a four star general barking orders at his troops. Instead in his customary soft, smooth, yet no uncertain and non-negotiable voice, he informed that she was his friend’s daughter and I needed to touch base with her, like yesterday. An executive order to initiate long distance matchmaking delivered to critical acclaim.

Being the selfish prick that I am, I’d have paid lip service to his sermons, hung up and snuggled deep into my comforter eager to make up for those lost minutes. But something wasn’t right.

“Wait! Her name’s Prasanna???” I repeated slowly highlighting “Prasanna” the second time around disbelievingly.

“Yes and here’s her email address…” my dad started off again from his script forcing me to cut him off irritatingly in mid sentence.

“I got her email address. But is her name really Prasanna?”

“Yes”

Followed by the most uncomfortable 30 second pause of my life. That pause could’ve been replaced with a lot of things. Dad could’ve said “Joking! Prasanna’s my friend’s name. She’s Preethi” or even gone with a tamer version of adding a “Kumari” or “Lakshmi” at the end. Nothing! I figured I should’ve rolled off the right side of the bed for either of those to happen. Instead I was saddled clueless with an email address of a “Prasanna” and my dad had hung up ensuring that irrespective of whether that name gave me the kicks or not I was going to throw the first pitch. #$%^

Caught-between-a-rock-and-hard-place moments like these call for a sounding board and mine was my friend Murali, a fellow who specialized in “calling a spade a spade”, especially when it came to me and women. Considering my sleep was shot and heralding the week with a stiff dose of reality couldn’t hurt, I texted him,

“What do you think about a Prasanna?”

Nothing happened even though I kept staring at the phone impatiently for the next few minutes and even shook it a few times to get something out. Wearily I woke up to freshen up. Thirty minutes later all ready to roll I found it blinking and wisecracking with “Dude!!! When did you start batting for the other side? LOL” Real mature!

Obviously he too was thinking that Prasanna referred to nothing except a guy, which made me squirm even further. What the #$%^ was my dad thinking? More importantly, what the #$%^ was her dad thinking when he coined this “brilliant” name? What on earth did he have against names like Preeti, Pavitra and Priya? Questions questions questions… All of which formed the backbone of my introductory email to Ms. Prasanna, though I toiled through multiple drafts to ensure the contents evoked mirth and weren’t downright throwing her dad under the bus.

The next 48 hours were officially a mess, primarily because Ms. P hadn’t emitted any signs of life, which made me almost certain that I’d gone over the top. Which is when I committed my first blunder. Instead of researching on Google like any sane person would do, I leaned on a few scatterbrained (looking back, that is) colleagues and friends (sample size – 10) to figure out who actually held sway over the name and the answer was universal. “We don’t know any damsel named Prasanna. A Madhu maybe, but no Prasanna” Anand even went one step further wondering why I kept saying her “brother”’s name when asked for hers!

Which is when I committed my second and biggest blunder. Letting my evil alter ego conjure up rabid situations packing me off on a crash course to self doom. I’m not a “honey” or “sweetie” guy, so what was I supposed to affectionately address her as? “P” (eww!), “Pras” (yuck!), “Prassy” (???)” when I couldn’t even bear to say her name. And somewhere sometime outside a marriage hall would read “Me weds Prasanna”. Christ! Might as well have added “What a shot in the arm for gay rights!” Almost an entire day of negativity and it was taking its toll on my fast approaching project deadlines. I just couldn’t take it no more. Sigh! I pulled up my laptop and shot out an email explaining why I couldn’t go through with this because I was being transferred to an office in South Korea and hoped she’d understand. How? Since when was South Korea cut off from the rest of the world? Pretty, cute, next biggest supermodel or not, I’d come to realize that she could never be my Ms. Right. Especially with that first name and nothing afterwards…

Fate IS a cruel mistress after all. At least in my case. Less than 10 minutes after I’d dispatched that ill-fated “shoot myself in the foot” email she’d added me as a friend on Facebook. Jack Nicholson would’ve deemed the “Oh my God! Is that really her?” and “Oh my God! What the #$%^ have I done?” expressions written across my face instantly as Oscar worthy. Too late, I swore to myself biting my lip. Closure was achieved less than a couple of hours later when she summarily indicated that she had no enthusiasm in pursuing a long distance relationship (#$%^in’ Korea. Couldn’t I have said South Carolina?) and she’d like this matter closed. Silver lining? NFL was in full swing. Talk about dropping down to earth gently…

Epilogue…

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Immortal words from my main man Shakespeare, regurgitated verbatim from Romeo & Juliet. All of which have made a more contrite me emboldened to go after the next “Sreenidhi”, “Kamal” or “Snehal”. Kidding!

Adios!

P.S.: All names have been changed to protect privacy. Of the author, that is. After all who wants a thousand curses and hexes flying their way, right?