Everything's in a name!

Laya, Liya, Leela, Lovely, Laasya, Lara, Leka, Lucky

Laksha, Likitha…. No it’s not like those are the names I kept dreaming of naming my daughter from childhood (If I have one), Like Monica does in the FRIENDS series.   

     How difficult it was for my cousin to name her daughter, after series of going through books and making use of the Google search engine from months together she still couldn’t come up with a suitable name for her daughter. It was just the night after the naming ceremony (Yes, it was AFTER), she called me downstairs for the midnight snack and she put forth her concern.

      She looked at her daughter, a little thing of ten or twelve months , bright lively, graceful with brilliant black eyes with  black – sooty hair…

“I want to change her name”, she said with a bloated face. I was surprised by her impetuous nature at such an absurd hour.

Me: “But the naming ceremony is just over”.

She: Yeah, I didn’t like that name.  

        I didn’t want to ponder about it more, after  something which had happened that morning , it was conspicuous for her to react this way.

        Morning drama:(Naming Ceremony)

        Name disclosed: Louchana

        Wah wah wah woo woo claps claps.

        After the pooja during lunch when all my mom’s seven sisters were sitting around the table, my cousin gets her new named baby and makes her sit at the centre of the table, and one of my aunt calls her louchana, the baby’s playing without responding to her new name, then my aunt increases her voice and calls Lochee, Lochee and bursts out laughing, in came in the laughter of the remaining six of them.

    

         That’s enough explanation as to what had made my aunt change her decision. It did sound whacky to me initially wondering what’s in a name!??  But If I was in her shoes, I would probably end up as lamentable as her. I definitely wouldn’t consider people making fun of my daughter!! (Shoot Shoot)

         

          This event actually reminded me of the book NAMESAKE written by Jhumpa Lahiri, where GOGOL (character’s name) finds his strange name a constant irritant, and eventually he tries to change it .

         

           When Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, he hadn’t predicted the plight of our modern times.

I wonder what was it to be called Bill Gates. Or Jack Hammer. Why would they wanna name their children so??

        So I did appreciate my cousin for her foresightedness. She later settled in for Liharika.