Whats in a name??

Whats in a name?...maybe everything, or nothing at all.
I read a post which commented about the names of Brad pitt and Angeline Jolie's latest twins, it said" while the son has a name that is as weird as that of a lot of celebrity kids , the daughter for a change , has a normal name"...hmmmm.... this topic intrigued me.

Lets start from the beginning. I was told that my name came out of a disagreement between my father and my grandmom, who could not agree on each other's choice, so they just combined both and named me. I should thank my stars that the word means something and does not sound as disjoint at a lot of names of my generation. It is traditional as it can get, and quite modern too.
For many years when i was a kid, i never liked my name( the fact that a very popular C grade actress had the same name caused much heartburn and ridicule). It took a very old Bishop lots of patience to talk me out of it. Maybe it has something to do with his talk, but names intrigue me. Sometimes, when i only have the name of a person, i try and put a personality to it. Why was he/ she named that ? what did the parents think? Sometimes it tells you a lot about what to expect..and something it turns out to be a complete blooper.

I think my generation suffers from having some of the worst possible names i have come across...the one's before that was very traditional, so they has names with meanings, and the current gereration seems to have returned to sanity after the brief experiment with our generation. I has classmates with the following names " Rasna"/ " Lorry"/ " Dreamsweetie"/ etc..and countless others with names that combined the elements of both parents names( this was the fad/ the IN thing), and sounded weird!The trauma of living with those names must be awful!
One of my little cousins almost became a victim of this...her parents realized before the naming ceremony that when they combined their names, the word that was formed exactly translated into....errrrrr" moustache"!!!!!!!!!!!and quickly found an alternative.

How do you classify a name as good and another as bad?At the end of the day, a name is very personal,as i have my own likes a dislikes when it comes to it. One of the reason's i said "yes" to TB , may also be because he has a very traditional sounding name..i just liked the ring of it. I love names that have a meaning, that are musical,and signify something. It just helps me associate that person with something tangible, maybe.

When we were expecting V, we dicussed names , as any parents to be would, ....i was quite sure it had to be a single word . We had a penchant for traditional Indian names, so V was called " Vishnu". I could not think of a more " all encompassing name",and thank fully, the family loved it.Between three cousins, we have four boys, and all their names mean the same. Says something about the family!

I wonder at times if having another name would have affected the course of events in my life? Probably not......Would it have affected the kind of person i am? Maybe yes...and i like mine exactly as it is today- name and life. I'll have to ask TB if he would have proposed , had i been known with a different name.... And then i will know if a name has any effect on course of life too....