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 The Name Game

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

                                                        ~William Shakespeare

One of the famous quotes by William Shakespeare. But I think he mustn't have come across any person going through the 'name crisis' which primarily happens because some parents don't put in much effort when naming their children.

One day, when I was travelling in a bus, I overheard a conversation (Oops! I shouldn’t have. It is bad manners) between the conductor of the bus and some passengers. The conductor told that he was named after a sweet called ‘Barfi’. He felt so bad about it that whenever anyone asked him of his name, he would tell it, embarrassed and inviting laughter. I wanted to tell him: there is a movie with the same name, with a title song dedicated to his name only, but I didn’t, thinking he might feel I’m teasing him.

A similar kind of situation is with my father. He is having a different name. I think he doesn’t like it much as I’ve seen him many times introducing himself as “Chandigarh uncle” rather than by his name. I remember when he was promoted in his job; several newspapers had misspelt his name - each making their own variations of his name. It took them a few months to get accustomed to his name.

My sister has a Sikh name, despite the fact that we are not Sikh. Whenever she tells her name to people, they automatically presume her surname is ‘Kaur’ and she gets irritated every time it happens. And if people get to know about her name from me, the next question they put forward is: You are having a Hindu name then why is she having a Sikh name? “Because my parents are secular,” my sarcasm says, but all I do is flash a smile.

I have another story: Once I appeared in a school test. Thankfully, I was expecting 10/10 as I did it really well. But as my luck would have it (or I should say my surname would have it) the teacher cut one mark for misspelling my own surname. She encircled the surname written by me and corrected it to ‘Rawat’ instead of ‘Ralh’.

What to say about the feeling of telling your surname to others for more than once because they do not get it in the first time. And after that making their own versions of it. There rarely is anyone who has pronounced it correctly in their very first attempt. One teacher could see an extra ‘A’ at the end of it and became the proud inventor of the most hilarious version of my surname.

If, by chance, (or by the choice of your parents) you have the popular-name-of-those-days, then don’t get surprised if you find several other people with the same name as yours; be it in your school, workplace etcetera, and then be ready for various nicknames to be given to you by your friend circle to distinguish you from other people with the same name.  So, yes, there is a lot in the name; name your children wisely as it is one of the things which will stick to them for a lifetime unless, of course, they change it later on.

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Isn't this a smart way of first writing a story? 

New bottle, Old wine.

1. Share the story via a third-party platform.

2. It somehow gets deleted, so you draft a whole another post to make a hue and cry about it and,

3. finally re-introducing that same post again.

Sounds like a gimmick to increase the count of blog posts. 

Writer's note: (As if the whole post has been written by someone else and then comes this note by the writer. Seems like there are two versions of mine who are staging a public fight.)

What would I gain by increasing the post count? It doesn't work this way that if you get more subscribers/views you'll get more money, especially with disabled AdSense. 

Do you see any ads? No, right? Hence proved.