Nomenclature blues

What was it with Mallu parents, especially the Christians, of the previous generation, that they could not think of nice and creative names for their offspring?

How did an entire generation end up naming kids on the basis of the mother's name's first syllable+father's name's first syllable (and various other similar combinations)? Was it some kind of food product that they all ate at around that time (read the 70's and the 80's)? Was it something like endosulfan that was sprayed on the food grains of the unsuspecting junta?

Take the case of a lady I know. Her husband and she, obviously delighted at the birth of the khandaan ka chiraag (translated literally, that reads "family's lamp") in 1988, decided to give him a very unique name -- Pachjo *...uh huh. I am sure it must have been unique in some circles (I can visualise a number of my north Indian friends raise their eyebrows if they hear this name), but if you heard the logic they used to arrive upon this name, you would raise your eyebrows to ad-infinitum. The kid should have been named "Pachaveetil Jose *", Pachaveetil * being the family name, and Jose being the kid's christian name. So they decided, instead of the usual mother's name and father's name rigmarole, let us do something unique and name him from his own name (first derivative et al...they must be geniuses at differential calculus!).

When their second chiraag was born 3 years later, they ran out of unique ideas, and perhaps realised too that the first born's name was not so unique in Mallu Land after all, so they named the little one Sachjo *... did you ask "what was the logic?" Well, it was just to match or rather rhyme with the elder sibling's name (why does the second child have to suffer such injustices???)


I know many more cases and most are hilarious, and most of the then-kids-now-adults, resent their silly names :-) One good outcome though, has been that these silly-named adults consult a whole lot of baby name sites and other baby naming literature, before they name their kids.

It's taken an entire lifetime (well almost...) to rectify the mistakes of the previous generation. Here's hoping that the syndrome that led to this irrational nomenclature is not hereditary, and more so, that it does not manifest in some generation to come :D

* --> Names have been changed to protect the identity of the individuals concerned (or rather, to protect myself from their ire :-P )