Thursday, June 30, 2005
Naming issues
(You know you're Indian when...you see the title of this post as a pun :)
My friend Shubha, aspiring writer and fellow graduate student, has made a respectable profession out of the traditional feminine talent of prying into people's closets and unearthing skeletons, ostensibly claiming them as inspiration for her literary pursuits. In one of our lengthy discussions on such literary forensics, she claimed that one essential part of the desi immigrant experience is the necessity of having to shorten or otherwise mutilate one's name to make it more friendly for the American tongue.
I don't quite agree that shortening names is necessarily a response to the immigrant situation. I think Santa (Santashil) has been called that way before he came to the US, so has Soups (Supramanya).
My case is even more unique. My actual name (Rajarshi -- if you didn't know) is SO uncommon even in India, I'm used to hearing it massacred from the time my memory can lead me back to. Unfortunately, it's always been confused with a much more common female name 'Rajashri'. So I'm used to being gender mis-identified since childhood -- a traumatic experience for a male child, I assure you. Maybe that's the root of some of my gender issues, in hindsight :D
In junior college, I decided to de-emasculate myself and went under 'Raj', In college I was 'Bando'. These 'ridiculous' (in Shubha's terms) nicknames actually bring me more succour than the idea of having a transgendered name!!!
In fact, I am more comfortable having my name pronounced by Americans than fellow desis, because at least Americans bother to read the letters and pronounce it MORE correctly than my compatriots!!!
This phenomenon turned out to have a dubious advantage, from the early days of call-center outsourcing, I always could detect easily if the person at the other end of the 1-800 number was in India, regardless of accent. I'd spell out my first name. The American would accept the spelling. The Indian would go for pronouncing it, and invariably end up with the wrong gender!!!! And we'd end up having a nice conversation and quick service :)
In my opinion, it reflects on less on the American acceptance of foreign names -- I am very satisfied with Americans on that particular account -- and more on the Indian (in particular, Bengali) tendency towards long-winded 'meaningful' names, often for no other reason than keeping up with the Mukherjees next door, who have fondly christened their only issue something like Shoumoshubhrorobirajkumar Mukhopadhyay. Poor kid, nobody from any other part of India is gonna think he's a guy -- "Soumya?" and his American nickname -- 'Homo'. How do you deal with that - neither the right gender nor sexual orientation!!
My favourite piece of advice to Indian couples in America expecting babies -- tell me what name you're thinking of and I'll tell you what your kid's gonna get called in high school. I think I've saved a lot of children from fates worse than death :D
To top it all: here's the name of Naureen's child (just turned a year old): Nishant Mikhail Dash. Deja vu? Read previous post...
My friend Shubha, aspiring writer and fellow graduate student, has made a respectable profession out of the traditional feminine talent of prying into people's closets and unearthing skeletons, ostensibly claiming them as inspiration for her literary pursuits. In one of our lengthy discussions on such literary forensics, she claimed that one essential part of the desi immigrant experience is the necessity of having to shorten or otherwise mutilate one's name to make it more friendly for the American tongue.
I don't quite agree that shortening names is necessarily a response to the immigrant situation. I think Santa (Santashil) has been called that way before he came to the US, so has Soups (Supramanya).
My case is even more unique. My actual name (Rajarshi -- if you didn't know) is SO uncommon even in India, I'm used to hearing it massacred from the time my memory can lead me back to. Unfortunately, it's always been confused with a much more common female name 'Rajashri'. So I'm used to being gender mis-identified since childhood -- a traumatic experience for a male child, I assure you. Maybe that's the root of some of my gender issues, in hindsight :D
In junior college, I decided to de-emasculate myself and went under 'Raj', In college I was 'Bando'. These 'ridiculous' (in Shubha's terms) nicknames actually bring me more succour than the idea of having a transgendered name!!!
In fact, I am more comfortable having my name pronounced by Americans than fellow desis, because at least Americans bother to read the letters and pronounce it MORE correctly than my compatriots!!!
This phenomenon turned out to have a dubious advantage, from the early days of call-center outsourcing, I always could detect easily if the person at the other end of the 1-800 number was in India, regardless of accent. I'd spell out my first name. The American would accept the spelling. The Indian would go for pronouncing it, and invariably end up with the wrong gender!!!! And we'd end up having a nice conversation and quick service :)
In my opinion, it reflects on less on the American acceptance of foreign names -- I am very satisfied with Americans on that particular account -- and more on the Indian (in particular, Bengali) tendency towards long-winded 'meaningful' names, often for no other reason than keeping up with the Mukherjees next door, who have fondly christened their only issue something like Shoumoshubhrorobirajkumar Mukhopadhyay. Poor kid, nobody from any other part of India is gonna think he's a guy -- "Soumya?" and his American nickname -- 'Homo'. How do you deal with that - neither the right gender nor sexual orientation!!
My favourite piece of advice to Indian couples in America expecting babies -- tell me what name you're thinking of and I'll tell you what your kid's gonna get called in high school. I think I've saved a lot of children from fates worse than death :D
To top it all: here's the name of Naureen's child (just turned a year old): Nishant Mikhail Dash. Deja vu? Read previous post...
# posted by technophobicgeek @ 7:06 PM 
