Naming my Children

This is my story on ‘The story behind the names’.

Every parent would like to name their children with unique names, or someone they idealise or something that means special or even equivalent to something very precious. Similarly, we too have named our kids something unique and meaningful.

Unknowing the gender of the baby to be born, I only had one thing in my mind, the named should relate to ‘Himalayas’. Previous year, we as a couple went on a biking trip to the famous Himalayan ranges. We paired on a yamaha RX and drove all the way from Delhi to Leh-Ladak and back. One wonderful trip, which mesmerised us by its picturesque beauty, its serenity and all the wonderful memories it brought in to our lives. We wanted to cherish our adventurous trip by naming our baby after the famous ‘Himalayas’.

Luckily, as per the Hindu calender, my daughter’s name had to start with the alphabet “H”, precisely, “Hi”. Not that I was a votary of religious believes, but didn’t want to miss the perfect opportunity to name her with the word ‘Hima’. Hima is a synonym for Dew or mist as per sanskrit, which will melt off. Meaning wasn’t favourable to my thoughts. So I decided, I will modify to make it something more meaningful to my taste. I browsed a lot of names online, read a few books, nothing captured my attention. One fine day, as I was lying with not much to do, an old Sanskrit dictionary in the book rack caught my attention (used during my high school days). As I glanced through the dictionary, The word ‘Himadyuthi’, caught my attention. The meaning was simple, a ‘cool light’. I blessed my daughter to become a person emanating cool light to everyone and show the path just like the moon in dark sky and named her “HIMADYUTHI”.

We are often questioned about her name being so complicated and how are we managing it in a foreign land? Trust me, they actually call her name perfectly and at-a-go without miss reading her name and we are no more amused by it. Her name was not a problem at all. Probably that was the reason, we decided on our son’s name to challenge everyone even more 😉

Coming to my son’s name. My son was born in a foreign country. People around us were naming their kids with short and easy syllables so that the kids can easily spell out their own names and so will the foreigners calling our Indian names indifferently. I wanted to name something which meant “Earth”. Simply because, daughter was named meaning ‘moon’ and if son would be named meaning ‘Earth’, it would be nice. Both Earth and moon are attracted and stick to each other forever and so did I want, my kids to be attached to each other forever. Now yet again, I was lucky enough, as per his birth, his name would be ideal to start with ‘D’. Dharani was something I liked but Earth is feminine. My eye again yearned for the dictionary and by a week’s time of researching, came up to the manly version. ‘DHARANIDHRUT’, meaning, The bearer of the Earth.

Their names are difficult to spell, difficult to read and difficult to reiterate. I remember one of my friends making fun and saying, ‘You have made sure your kids don’t tell their names to anyone till they are at least 5 yrs old and not write it till they are in grade 1. They won’t be punished frequently as calling their names are harder.’ Well, both of them are studying in a country which finds it hard to even call the simplest names. Surprisingly my kids are called flawlessly. Hima and Dharan are their short names and Hima is unerringly called but Dharan is called Darren, but still sounds nice. I’ve heard worst ways of calling simple names and changing a lovely name to something terrible. Im contented, I’ve named them uniquely and thus stay distinctively and make their names so famous that it becomes a common name after them.

–Mrs. Anuraga Gowtham