What's in a Name?

Apparently, a lot, if you want to collapse an identity into something short yet meaningful. But don’t spell it weird, okay?

Hazard a guess? Oh, wait, you can see it in the post. Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

The infamy of Shakespeare’s famous play on two lovers fated to die is tiring. Oh, how the clueless use it in every drama that requires two brain cells to come together for a more complex dialogue.

And if that wasn’t enough, the passionless English teachers and professors break the coast of sanity with injected questions in finding philosophical breadcrumbs in a banal statement that one should never give any heed to. Poor students, though. Their marks depend on it.

Which, interestingly, should be enough of a clue to make everyone realise how important a name really is. Or how much of an issue it can be.

No, not the newly released edition of a daily or a magazine. Nor the clinical-esque term for newborns.

I’m talking about that palpable rift, the chasm of conscious clashes. A choice to consume conflict. An aimless wandering into the unknown.

Too tall an order, right when I’m foraying into the foyer of foibles that my mind resurfaces in fumbling attempts of morning flights in rosy light to break the night.

Enough abstract poetry, Jagruit. Get to the point!

Very well. Let’s begin a tale of what a name entails. What my name entails.

It all began with a simple, unassuming letter. A letter that’s positioned ninth in the alphabet, yet carries a title. On its own, it works surprisingly well in the pronunciation of my name.

Jagruit. Jahg-rut. Soft with the T, please.

The i is so unimportant that it could be replaced with an a and the pronunciation wouldn’t move an inch. And you definitely have an a in team. So, there’s that.

But when you put it next to a letter from the tail end of the alphabet family, things shake up. You see, there’s a u here, but not you. Stop reading as if you have to save every breath in a text message or else you’d be charged double the rate. I am talking about the letter u. You are not a letter. But u definitely is.

And when this upstart gets hold of names, it only brings ruin. There’s definitely a u and an i in ruin. Beware.

It just so happens that these two distant cousins, eleven times removed, find themselves next to each other in my name on a bright Sunday morning without any vodka in their cups. Chaos ensues.

All my life, I have struggled with a very niche form of pedantism. That of correcting my name’s pronunciational vomit that cascades imperfectly out of people’s tongues.

Jahg-ruti. Uh, no sir, I’m a boy.

Jahg-root. Sure, root my name that way.

Jahg-rit. Yeah, that works. It’s close.

Jahg-roo-eet. Ehhh? Just . . . what?

Of all these, the first one takes the cake. Funny, isn’t it, when your name contains a letter that’s more common in the names of the opposite sex. Imagine, then, being called that in an all-boys Christian missionary school. So much fun!

As the saying goes, the struggle was real.

However, these instances only show up in text-to-voice processing tasks that human beings often fumble with. Particularly so if one’s mother tongue is different from the name you’re trying to decipher.

At least I can cover myself up pretty well by speaking my name just the way I want others to say it. Unless I am on a phone call. However, that’s a campfire story for some other night.

Why the odd combination? My ever-so perceptive mother and her familiarity with Marathi found these two letters better represent the unique Devanagari sound in my name that the English language can never produce. Or pronounce well, for that matter. A double-edged sword, frankly, seeing how I mostly have to communicate my name in English on every entitled form, electronic message, or clay tablet.

Names are interesting that way. My last name—as an exemplary instance of fateful combinations that backfire rapidly—walks in the room while alliterating the first, forms a cool initial while bragging about it, slips on a banana peel, and leaves streaks of puns, jokes, and misunderstandings that I always have to clear out.

I’m shaming the name, and the game is to name it. Urgh, I feel like I’m biting my own tail. Perhaps my own brain cells would prefer a simpler approach.

Hear me out: Going forward, I should probably announce my identity as a ticker-tape list of features and experiences that define me.

A 30-something, Indian male who’s lived in certain cities, was schooled here, university-ed there, is a sir-reads-a-lot, writes rants on Substack, loves playing games, enjoys time with his family, and is employed by this one megacorp.

That’ll do.

But do you still know me?

Perhaps you do. Perhaps you don’t.

But if you do . . . all you’d need is my name to conjure it all up.

That’s what is in the name. The identity card of lived experiences. The name is a pointer to everything one has lived, and the image they left when interacting with others.

And this came to me while taking a walk. Perhaps it was fresh oxygen. Perhaps it was the birdsong trickling into my ears. Perhaps it was The Rest is Science episode talking about making sense of random stuff and touching on the topic of names.

Or perhaps it was my own name printed on two identity cards that I have to carry every single day as an identifier to the identifier that helps people identify who I am.

I’ll leave that judgement to you. Along with my name.

- Jagruit