All in a Name
Recently, one of our friends delivered a girl whom they named as 'Anvitha'. The interesting part about this rare name is that it has got two flavors : One is the Indian name ie 'Naga Anvitha' and the other being the American counterpart("Anvitha Naga") to follow the "First Name, Middle Name, Last Name" concept. That got me wondering as how we all Indians here in US attempt to look for names that gives global(read as 'American') prespective while still retaining the "Indianness". We strive for Indian names that are easily pronounced and spelled same across languages , those that are no more than 3 or 4 syllables, no tongue-twisters or have meanings that could be made fun of.
I never realized the significance of it (when we were looking for names for our lil one) until my cousin, who happens to be an ABCD/second generation immigrant in US, informed us about how some of the Asians in his High School were ridiculed for their names . He even cautioned us to 'google' the name and check out its nick names on websites. For instance, name 'Kshitij' - it has a beautiful meaning in Hindi (Horizon) and yet in English, it is shortened for 'shitti, shit' so on and so forth.
Gone are the days when when you could tell the origin of the person by the name in India. It was typical to have south indian names with the likes of 'Shrinivas, Venkat, Vijay, Bhanu' , Gujrathis would go by the 'esh' - 'Jignesh, Urvesh, Jayesh' while Punjabis loved the 'inders' - jaswinder, manninder, parminder, sukhwinder :-) And of course, there is also this concept of nick names or pet names (really???) like some people say. Funniest are those amongst Bengalis - Jomblu, Piklu, Gumblu, and the famous Gogul (from The Namesake!!).
Our Chinese counterparts are not as lucky as us to have names that could be easily pronounced in English. Other day, there was a chinese candidtate for an interview at my company whose name was 'Yayue Li' which is pronounced as "Yaa -Yuuu- Yiii Li". All of us who were scheduled to interview her spent considerable amount of time practicing her name before we met her!!!. One of our Chinese friends are expecting a baby and they tried explaining us about their dilemma of finding a Chinese name. Apparently, it is almost impossible to find one that could be spelled and pronounced correctly in English. And hence most of them adopt a methodology of having an American first name and a Chinese middle name.
Coming back to Indian names, there is no doubt that names of our lil ones will also be shortened and Americanized (Of course, if they decide to stay in Amrica) - Nikitha will become Niki, Anvitha may become Ann, Krishna to Krish etc.
So really what's in a name?

Swathi

Month Of July
Here are some assorted pictures from July. I have created a separate album for Nikitha and Anna Mae-Anna Mae had come and spent a week with Nikitha and Nanny when her baby sitter had gone on vacation. At the end, both became really good friends (so much for the saying by the researchers that toddlers really dont care about other kids, they dont make friends that early). It was good fun watching the two eat, sleep, play and fight together. Here are some pictures and a video.