The gynaecologist had spoken. And there lay shattered Gouri’s dreams of the pitter-patter of little feet adorned with silver anklets, jhimiki, odiyanam, pattu pavadai, orange and yellow rubber bands, pink jeans and purple hair clips. “Payyan ma“, gynaec said gleefully.
Gouri went into a funk. “So what do I do?” she worried. I could commiserate with her predicament.
Amma snorted: “We never thought of names as an issue in those days.”
She was right. A whole lot of my older male cousins are called Kalyanasundaram after my grandfather. The female ones, especially the elder ones, had more variety. They were named after their paternal grandmothers’s names. Younger daughters, like yours truly, were named after the maternal patti.
Right now, there are a dozen Sundar maamas, Sundaram chittappas, Kalyan periappas, Kalyanam athimberes from the renowned family-tree greying rapidly across the world. If you bump into a Kalyan at Philly or Sundaram at Bangalore, it’s surely him, my broder, I’m tellin’ ya.
Gouri said that she didn’t want those desperately-trying-to-be unique names, digging out Prakrit and Sanksrit names of the medieval times that are in vogue these days. She wanted a name that would be unfashionable and comforting; short and homespun, regular and easy on the tongue. We wracked our heads.
Sundaram Amannjicame to the rescue. “We are worshippers of the Ardhanaari. What’s a boy who is not bestowed qualifications of a girl in name or dress?” he asked.
“You mean a pink frock?” I asked.
“C’mon don’t you remember how Sundar, Kalyan, Sundaram, Kalyanam and me were all dressed in a cousin’s or sister’s frock, with earrings and anklets and khol in our eyes, and pottu and made to smile for cameras. And how those pictures ruined our chances to win a sensible wife?” he reminded me.
“Sorry, no cross-dressing for my boy. They grow pretty much confused these days anyway”, G scowled.
”Choose a name after a Goddess for your son”, he suggested. “That’s what all those wise old men of our great country, yearning for a daughter, did ruining their sons’s lives with the first call of their names”, he chuckled.
“A female name for a male child?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah, we are weird you know. Just as those cross-dressing photos are meant to shame them in manhood before their fiances, we give boy babies feminine names to confuse them of their sexual orientation but in the end we come around and insist they all grow into hetrosexual adults despite their feminine monikers,” explained Ammanji.
“Like?”
“You know the Hasan brothers-Chandra Hasan, Charu Hasan and Kamala Hasan?”
“Too Kodambakkam for me-Cut!” G said.
“MeenakshiSundaram, GouriSundareswaran, KamakshiEswaran”?
“Sounds like a Shankar Mahadevan song set for a Vijay starrer in Madurai”, I smirked.
“GomathiSankaran, GowriSankar, Kanthinathan, DurgaSankaran, BhavaniSankar, UmaSankar?”
“Too Nellai, small townish. The family allegiance to Sankarankovil has ended”, I dismissed.
“SeethaRaman, JanakiRaman, LakshmiNarayanan, Gourinathan or Lakshmikanthan?”
“I can smell the puliyodarai”, Gouri pointed out.
“RadhaKrishnan or RadhaMohan, TulsiKrishnan?” Amannji listed.
“Sounds very ISKON,” I sighed.
“BagawathiEaswaran?”
“Sounds like the name of a tamburan in Thiruvanathapuram”.
“Sudhakar, LalithaKumar, GouriPrasad, PremaKumar?” Ammanji moved to newer pastures.
“Small-parts Telugu actors from Kakinada”, G shrugged.
”Your in-laws are goddess worshippers, no?” Amma suggested pointedly.
“Kalidas, Shakthidas?” Ammanji looked hopeful.
G gave up. They were hitting below the umblical belt, she accused Amma and Ammanji.
It’s best we get a grip and bite the bullet that some wombs shall not cradle a girl.
And gender mix-ups is the last battle baby boy junior needs to be initiated at birth.
Else, ask all the KamalaKannans and GouriShankars of the Tamil tribe how they cope with the twin-gender monikers.
“It’s easy”, says G’s neighbour DeviPrasad. “My wife’s name is Prasanna. She’s the one who wears the pants in our household”.
Haha.. yes I know a few people with names like this. Only last week I was pulling the leg of my pregnant friend – one who’s family members are called either Meenakshi or Ramanathan or flavors of those. I was telling her that once she’s had her baby, we needn’t ask “Boy or girl?”, instead we could just ask “Meenakshi or Ramanathan?”.
You talking to me, lady?
(Oops, er, yeah)
I think the Ramanis and Kasturis beat the Prasannas hands down
(The Hindu’s editor was Kasturi Rangan, remember?)
damn! I nvr knew pickin baby names was this tough…. Thank you amma for givin me such a nice name!
I guess after a point of time when all names have been saturated we shall have versions for names.
eg, Janakiraman 2.0.3, lakshminarayan 1.0.4 etc!
(smart chap-you’ve figured already)
@maxdavinci
ROFLMAO!
The s/w engineer in me has already thought along those lines.
If I end up having two sons, I plan to name them Sachin and Sachin_1
Very well written maami!
(thanks)
Hilarious midsection. Died laughing at the ISKCON reference to Tulsikrishnan. Gaaahahaha.
But not approving of this white-man syndrome of being black and white about boy and girl names. Why should androgynous Indian names be an issue in a culture such as ours, that is evolved enough to understand and respect them, I say? Should we really raise our children to be black&white and western, losing out on the delicious shades of grey of our culture? Our English educations have done enough damage to that already. And starting them off with a “you should be thankful that I didnt give you an androgynous name” is not a good beginning.
Yesa nova?
(Ah, ogay ba kochikade)
PS: If you walk into one of my family gatherings and say “Ranganayaki”, the collective “YAESSS?” that will emerge from all the women present can easily rock the Nandi Hill and cause minor climatic variations.
(Stop it da.Peoples at home thinking I’m cuckoo giggling before komputer)
Peoples:
All bouquets for this piece must be sent to one Shri.James Mylaporean who put a gun to my temple and suggested I spin a yarn on the JanakiRamans of our world.
All bricks, though, are to be sent my way.
Good one! I once had a marwari girl in my class called Prakash.
Of course there are a few women I know called Krishna…
(Why da Padmanabhan?)
Ravan(an)? In the spirit of true Shaivaite-ness?
TamBrahm with prefixed maiden name
His parents he doesn’t dare to blame
But from cradle to grave
He never forgave
His pals who called him a dame.
Wow Sooper Maami
So prolific yet so good.
From Kodambakkam to Kakinada, the disqualification dialogues are hilarious.
With some asexual names like ‘thangam’ ’sathya’ etc. , I have seen folks having a different challenge.
Also had an Ezhilarasu in college, who fitted perfectly with the neutrality of his name…
I completetly forgot my father was one such victim. He was named by my grandparents Vijay Kumar. Everyone called him Viji though. One fine day when he was in 3rd standard, he walked over to the principal and renamed himself Raghavan which could not be altered in any form to sound like a girl’s name. However, it didnt seem to have much effect, because within the family everyone still calls him viji and think his full name is Vijayaraghavan.
(Kalli, eda mudaleye en solale?.Muhahahha
)
I have a girl-cousin called Sundaram, married to one Mr. Vijayshree.
Perfect match.
“those desperately-trying-to-be unique names, digging out Prakrit and Sanksrit names of the medieval times”
Appa broke the mould with me and my bruvver and deliberately went out of his way to give us appattamaana Iyengar names despite us being of the other persuasion. My amma being of the old school raised no objections.
Trying to continue the tradition I went out and researched the rishis of my gothram (have this thing against naming after meat eating Kshatriya wife suspecters, but that’s another subject!) but when it came to decision time the AhamudaiyaL (who is of the new school) put her lovely foot down and ensured that our boy now has a bog standard, common as parthenium name!
(Tell me, why did prominent rishis, after whom gothrams are said to originate, come from meat-eating Kshatriya background?Reformed kings turned rishis-bharadwaj, a king;kashyap, a king again;koushik, vishwamitra king again, no? did that mean they left their seeds in many wombs to proliferate in other caste women-a regular royal practise? also kings who did not have access to IVF treatments would get the royal priests to impregnate their queens. is that why upper castes, apart from brahmins, too have gothrams? though i’m ignorant about the origin of bouraguthsia, vadula gothram types.if we go back too far behind, i suspect we’ll end up finding that all of us are of mixed lineage.)
[...] Maami has a lovely post on a gender-bender while choosing names for a new-born. Sundaram Amannji came to the rescue. “We are the worshippers of the Ardhanaari. What’s a boy who is not bestowed qualifications of a girl in name or dress?” he asked. [...]
Nice one maami!’
I had a friend in school called ‘Poonam Kumar’ with Kumar being her appa’s name….but the new PT Master who was taking attendance (ama ama…antha kodumai ya thaniya than varnikanum…..!),thought it was a male and was looking for the person amongst the boys!!
He definitely had no clue about Poonam Dhillon,we knew !!!
We have a situation in our house where my anna is Chandrasekaran (shortened to chandra) and his wife is Chandra ( and they call her chander in her house).
So there was utter confusion in the house in the early days of their marriage with both responding to a call or neither at all.
And in third person it was even worse leading to a lot of misunderstandings until finally we made our brother into Chandru and he took many years to adapt to this name change.
Sometimes I think my patti’s strategy was the best: she called people periyavale, chinnavale, peran ambadiayale etc – absolutely no confusion in that!
Nice post, maami. But SeethaRaman, JanakiRaman and Gourinathan are not at all puliyodharai
“Reformed kings turned rishis-”
Therein lies part of the answer to this complex dialogue.
The preceptors of most well known gotrams were all men who had a sea change from their previous lives and chose to follow a path of learning and self realisation.
Some, such as the kings turned rishis, were able to emerge from their paradigm of “kama-krodha-lobha-moha-madha-maatsarya” and reach for a higher path. Indeed, it could be argued that they needed to have been steeped in that morass before they could liberate themselves of it.
I’ll be the first to admit that my reading into this subject is quite deficient, however if I might use one example-that of Uddaalaka Aaruni and his son Svetaketu. Their incomparable dialogue led to, in part, some of the aphorisms we have heard, such as “Tat tvam asi” and “Brahman arindhavan Brahmanan” etc.
The thought in some of these commentaries truly made me feel insignificant and small.
Truly worthy of respect-thus my view that we ought to be remembering these trail blazers of original thought.
Sorry for such heavy material.
Maami,
Great blog! A question to you and other commenters. My wife and I are a typical Tam-brahm couple living in U.S. My wife and I were blessed recently with first child (boy). While we agreed on the name early, my wife threw a wrench at the last minute while holding the newborn baby that she would like to make my son’s middle name the same as her deceased father’s – in his memory. Of course, not keeping my own dad or grandad’s names but now having her father’s name as my child’s middle name threw me into a “in-laws fairness” tizzy. She insisted on it, and I agreed since she lost her father at a young age.
It this practice common? Do people in Chennai name their children based on the matriarchal side as opposed to the patriarchial side? I am not being chauvinistic but a part of me is still struggling with it that my son has my FIL’s name as part of his name, but not my own father’s (that is, his paternal grandfather’s) name.
Thoughts, comments, insights? Thanks!
(It’s perfectly sensible practise, quite Western too-George Bush junior etc- to include the name of the grandparents on either side in the child’s name. Your child will carry your father’s gene and name, in the sense your name will be his surname which is probably your grandpa’s and so it’s lovely of you to allow the child his maternal gene tree name too.We do have the tradition of naming children after the maternal side-I am named after my mum’s mum. )
Maami,
Thanks for the reply to my comment. However, my last name, which our son has is nothing but my given name (don’t ask me how – it’s the weird Tam Brahm convention of having no real last names, just dad’s initial and your given name when I grew up). There fore, my son’s name is: His Given Name (First) Maternal Grandfather’s Name (Middle) His father’s, i.e. My Given Name (Last).
As a result, my dad (i.e. his paternal grandpa’s name) is completely absent in his full name. Is this reasonably common in Chennai or TamBrahm culture?
(I ‘m afraid I don’t know much about this. Sorry)
Nice post. Not only in south India, it happens in north as well.
Famous Hindi actor Dharmendra’s wife is Prakash. When young, for some years I was confused as why has he married a man ?
Also, in sikhs, names like Kulwinder, Jasmeet, Harpreet can belong to either of sex depending on the last name (Singh or Kaur).