Skip to main content

Baby Naming


My only experience with baby naming is that of naming J. Her formal name is a mouthful even by desi standards and everyone state side warned me of dire consequences in the school yard with a name like that. It would get mutilated horribly and beyond redemption. It would a life-long cross for the child to bear. She would hate me when she grew up for saddling her with something like that. I should brace myself to seeing my child turn into an out of control teen.

Desis recommended that I tone it down to be more mainstream and not go near anything that was more than two syllables long. Meaningfulness was not of consequence, ease of pronunciation was of essence. The locals did not have any input on the kind of name I should pick but they knew that the one I had set my heart one was a disaster waiting to happen. I would regret my choice at leisure.I ignored public opinion and wisdom and had it my way.

Until recently when someone asked J her name, she refused to tell it and expected me to do so instead and then teach them how to pronounce it. In the best case, she would mumble it in an inaudible undertone. The name had indeed become as everyone had promised a source of much pain and embarrassment for her. It was becoming an obstacle in the way of normal social interaction and her ability to build a friend circle. J is extremely outgoing and loves people so this is much harder for her than it would be for a more introverted kid.

Thanks to my efforts with friends, teachers and kids, everyone who has known her for some length of time pronounces her name correctly. I was willing to help J along until she was old and strong enough to fend for herself. She is close to six now and I knew it was time to stop being her crutch. I decided that she would not be well served by a name that she was not able to identify with or felt a sense of pride in. One evening a few weeks ago I sat her down and we had a little conversation.

Me : "Why do you get a mouse's voice when someone asks you your name ?"

J : "No one understands my name and they don't know how to tell it"

Me : "Do you know the significance of your name ?"

J : "Yes"

Me : "Are you proud of your name and its meaning ?"

J : "Yes"

Me : "Do you want Mama to change your name to something that everyone can pronounce easily ?"

She gives this some thought and says "No"

Me : "Do you like your name enough to keep it for the rest of your life ?"

J : "Yes"

Me : "Then you will need to show more confidence in it. Your name has a very special meaning for me but it is also about your Indian identity. You were born here but your roots belong in India. You can either decide to hold on to the Indian part of you or let it go. What you decide to do about your name will decide that. It is your choice because it is your name. If you don't like what you have now would be the time to change it and Mama is willing to do it"

I am quite sure J did not understand all of what I was saying but enough to get my drift.

J: "I want to be both American and Indian. I don't want you to take away my name"

Me : "I'll give you two more chances. If you don't speak up confidently and say your name when people ask you, I will change it to something every recognizes, easy to pronounce and ordinary. You will no longer be special because you have decided that is not what you want"

The change was almost immediate. A random guy at the grocery store asked her what her name was a couple of days after this conversation. J surprised me pleasantly by telling him her name clearly. I hope things get better from here and her name is no longer her cross.

I used to think that my personal circumstances made naming J such an ordeal but it turns out that the problem is fairly widespread though the reasons are quite different from mine.

Comments

ggop said…
Jhumpa Lahiri was onto something in the whole name issue in The Namesake.

I can empathize with J. Some days I don't bother to correct the mispronunciation of my name (three syllables) much to my husband's irritation :-)
gg
Anonymous said…
J is a perfect name like yours HC.
Just let American's learn to say J.
In CA J is said as Ose not Jose. eg: San Jose, CA.
Ofcourse we dont pronounce Chinese names correctly and then Indianise the chen-accent to some changs etc.
Cool off with J. She will be fine in her teen, dont be hard to her. Ppl spell Puja nm wrong and say it wrong and I just ignore, dont take as persnl.
You r a smart parent, teach ur kid to say as she want her to say, no change just becoz its twisting of tongues.
Calcutta is Kolkatta and so on, leave the AngloEnglishinshhhh...say it J, everyone likes J HC.

TC,
Puja Sadani
Los Angeles, CA.
Heartcrossings said…
ggop - I am sure J will be able to relate to Gogol. Thankfully her name does not sound in the least fit funny :)

Puja - You make a great point about accents. Unless you are from the same place and culture you do not get the pronounciation exactly right. All I want for J is to feel comfortable in her skin - name and all.

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques