Oh Na Na..What's My Name?

When Rihanna croons ‘Oh Na Na What’s my name?’ our desi Sheila could probably medley
in without much difficulty singing ‘My name is Sheila’, the name having an Irish counterpart.
However, Chikni Chameli ,Jalebi Bai or Anarkali will not have the same fortune. They will have
a little bit of explaining to do, if their names are to be pronounced correctly in the West. This is
what happens to most of us who medley the East with the West by migrating here, but bringing
with us the influences of our eastern origins, one of the most prominent among them  -  our
names.

About a century back, the Assamese litterateur Lakhinath Bezbarua created a character
named Molok Guin Guin. This character was of an anglicized Indian man who had changed
his name from Moloku Gogoi to Molok Guin Guin to make it sound more western. The
character was part of his satirical writing, mocking the westernization of Indians .This feeling
is held probably until this day. I remember growing up hearing instances of people who had
changed their names after landing in America. Few common transitions are Krishnakant to
Kris, anything starting with Dev (Devakamal, Devabrata, etc) to Dave. All such references
had some intonation of ridicule in the conversation. My father would jokingly say, let’s change
our last name to Barrow referring to the Chatterjees( formerly Chottopadhyay), Mukherjees
(Mukhopadhyay), Handiques (Shondigoi),etc

The general impression was that people shirked their Indian identities and changed their
names as soon as they landed in the West. Once I made my trip to the other side, this became
myth number two to be busted. (The first was that Americans spoke fast which I wrote about
earlier). It might have been true in old times but not anymore. Most Americans shorten their
popular names, from that which was given to them at birth as well. They just prefer short
names, just as in India, everyone has a short nickname like Chintu, Pintu, Bubli, etc. So not
just William becomes Bill (made famous by we know who), but Michelle becomes Shelly,
Victoria becomes Tori, Robert becomes Bob, Deborah becomes Deb, Melanie becomes
Mel, Antoinette becomes Toni, Albert becomes Al and well, the list is endless. Names that
cannot be shortened by picking one syllable from a longer name are shortened by forming
some similar word like Tawnya could become Tanz, or sometimes it is just the first letter like
Mallika could become ( and sometimes has become) ‘M’. There seems to be no particular rule
as regards length as even names which are just two syllables long are simplified to a more
lovable two-syllable version. When immigrants come ashore, their names meet the same fate.
I was once discussing about this with an American friend, who asked me names of some kids I
knew and as I told her some names, she said ‘Oh, he will not get to keep his name ‘and then,’
Maybe, he can keep his’ on another one. The most inconceivable transition I have seen is
that of a person called Nathan. Even though this modification was pretty straightforward, I was
stumped when I found out that the person I thought would probably be an Irish American guy,
turned out to be one of my compatriots, Jagannathan.

I was once telling an executive’s wife about how it is considered improper in India to address
someone older or senior by their first name, leave alone a shortened version. She laughed
and said, “Over here, sometimes it’s just ‘Hey you’ “, indicating the informality. Now can
you imagine the challenge that locals face when they are faced with names like Srinivasan
Balasubramanian. Firstly, the visual appearance of the name makes it a daunting task to even
attempt to pronounce it. A co-worker once said, ‘How do you pronounce five consonants,
without a vowel in between?’ .That was probably an exaggeration but at first glance many
Indian names do appear like that, even though she was talking with particular reference to
Chinese names.

 Indians who have moved to the West don’t forsake their Indian identities. On the
contrary, I have found that the expatriates actually have more of an Indian self, sealed in within
them, unaltered by the social changes in India in recent times. The name change is more of
the socialization process(especially for those with longer ones), all in a land where even Jesus has been rechristened, albeit as a slang, as Jeez!