Muses of Murari

From Shrinidhi Hande post:

Problem is, my name defies a naming pattern traditionally followed in India. That is, all female names usually end with a vowel, particularly “I” or “a” (Mahishi, Arathi, Madhuri, Rani, Anjali, Savithri, Gouri etc or Asha, Usha, Kannika, Kareena, Karishma, Priya, Prema, Hema, Urmila, Maneesha, Divya, Megha, Radhika, Roopa and so on) and male names usually end without an vowel (when spelt in English)- Mahesh, Raveesh, Rajesh, Kumar, Manoj, Rakesh, Gopal, Ram, Vijay, Sundar, Nagaraj, Prasad, Preetham, Manohar … just to name a few)….

…. Used to get gtalk invites from strangers (probably they picked my ID from some email forwards) who think I am a lady and if accepted, they would ping me whenever I am online and start asking personal questions. If entertained, the conversation would soon head to “I am coming to your city next month, shall we meet?” At that time I ask them to check my blog which has my photo. 100% of the cases never heard from them again.

After reading this post, I thought of sharing the origin of my name and what I think of it.

I had mixed response when I usually tell my name (Saithilak Kumar, pronounced like "Sai Thilak Kumar") to the people for the first time. Some get confused and will ask me to pronounce it again. Some ask me why having three names in one. Some ask how it is spelled. Some give complements saying it is an unique name. I hadn’t had much thought about my name, except when people, mostly strangers, ask me about it or at least give me a odd look on hearing it.

On asking about funda behind my name, I was told by my parents, that the naming was done based on my astrology, stars & birth charts. Typical south Indian tradition. According to my birth charts, my name has to start with the letter "Thi" in local Indian language. So my parents decided on the name "Thilak", which means "Religious Mark" in Sanskrit language. They decided to give a suffix to the name, since we don’t have tradition to add the surname (caste name) as suffix to the first name, instead we prefix it along with the initial. So the generic name "Kumar" is added as suffix. My parents are devotees of Shirdi Sai Baba. My father especially, wants his son to be called as "Sai".  So they prefixed "Sai" to my name. So my name evolved as"Sai Thilak Kumar". Till my school/college days, the original name pattern I followed. Then I started to club "Sai" & "Thilak" and mention my name as "Saithilak Kumar".

Some times, I feel special for my name. It is an unique in its combination. I didn’t come across a person yet, with a similar name. There might one, though! Google search of my name yields almost all my internet activities in public. Starting with my blog, the serach results covers many of my forum interaction, profile details in many social websites, friend feed messages and more. If your name is more common ( like Ashok, Ramu, Shankar), then chances of your individual virtual footage in Google search has relatively lesser probability to show up, unless you or your activity are popular. But, what if your name is rare? Then, your virtual activity, irrespective of its quality, can easily be nailed down to you. Is it a privilege or a curse to have an unique name in this ubiquitously connected world?

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