recent trends
A recent trend is to name a child by taking some letters from the father’s name, some from the mother’s name, and combining them. Thus we have Shanmathi (son of Shankar and Sumathi), Vijay (son of Jayaram and Vidhya), Aaron (son of Anil and Rohini) and so on. There is also this tendency for all names in a family to start with the same letter. If by chance the names of the parents start with G, like Ganesh and Gayathri, they can name their children Gaurav and Gautham.
Movie industry
In the movie industry, naming a movie is very important. We can’t help but notice Ekta Kapur’s obsession with the alphabet ‘K’. All of their saas-bahu soaps start with the same alphabet, so we have Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Kkusum, Kasauti Zindagi Ki, etc.
names in mythology
In Hindu mythology, the same God has several names. The Hindu goddess Ambal has as many as 108 names. In the Ramayana, the sage Vasishta, at the request of King Dashrath, named all four of his sons. Kaushalya’s son was named Rama, the source of bliss. Kaikeyi’s son was named Bharata, the caretaker of one and all, and Sumitra’s twin sons were named Laxmana, the one possessed of the best human qualities, and Shatrughna, the one born to destroy enemies.
Sometimes people simply name their children after the star they were born under. Thus, we have Revathi, Aswini, Karthika, etc. among us. The naming of a child is done in a grand way in many religions. If in one religion it is known as “Naamkaran”, in another it is known as “Baptism”.
long and short names
The German Constitutional Court recently ruled in a ruling that giving a child an unusual name is fine, but giving him twelve is going overboard. He rejected an appeal from a mother who wanted to name her son Chenekwahow Tecumseh Migiskau Kioma Ernesto Inti Prithibi Pathar Chajara Majim Henriko Alessandro. The appeal was filed in response to the lower court’s 1998 decision to reduce the number of names to five. The lower court had ruled that having long names would have an onerous effect on the child.
electronic names
In Turkey, it appears that a software developer added the .com suffix to his name, and after some initial apprehension, the court allowed it. It seems that the man has been severely bitten by the e-bug!
unisex names
There are also a number of unisex names like Shashi, Kiran, Robin, etc. So when one hears those names, he can’t tell if the person is male or female.
unusual names
A few years ago I read an interview in a magazine called “Anandha Vikatan”. It was about three sisters who had unusual names. The name of the eldest is “I love you”, that of the second is “You love me” and that of the youngest “Sweet love”. I often think of the difficulties or funny incidents they would have had, with their unusual names!