During the 21st anniversary of the Gujarat riots, a diligent reader wrote in to ask if it was mere coincidence that the fictional District Magistrate in my novel, Danga, which deals with the riots sparked by the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, is named Laxman. No, I replied, with its obvious mythological resonance, the choice of name was quite deliberate, as was the fact that Lakshmana’s daughter is called Rekha, because her existence delimits her freedom of choice. And, while we’re at the confessional, we must also acknowledge that it’s not just a coincidence that the American girl coming to India to do good bears the surname of Hart.
in hollywood
The author who chooses a character’s name carelessly—by opening two pages of a telephone book and randomly combining the results, as one author claimed—does himself and his readers a disservice. The film world has long understood the aura of names. Hollywood stars have been changing their names for decades — macho cowboy John Wayne was born as Marion Michael Morrison, a prissy moniker who got sick on a saddle, and sultry Marilyn Monroe was born as Norma Jean. Was legally baptized with the household name of Too Far. Mortensen. Later, Bernie Schwartz took on the more glamorous screen name Tony Curtis, for reasons which Woody Allen (born Alan Königsberg), Dean Martin (Dino Crosetti), Fred Astaire (Friedrich Austerlitz) and Cary Grant (Archibald Leach) did well. understood. Could Boris Karloff have been half as sinister as William Henry Pratt, the name he was born with? Or Jerry Lewis just as silly if he’d stayed with Joseph Levitch? Or is Ava Gardner just as glamorously attractive as Lucy Johnson?
The filmmakers are keenly aware of the fact that people’s names have their own associations that cannot be taken away. Legendary Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick was born without a middle name, but added the middle initial O for effect – “as in God”, he said modestly. Ray Kroc, who had bought McDonald’s, wisely realized that he would sell more Big Macs than Big Krocs, and so adopted the name whose famous golden arches (from the letter M, absent from Ray’s own name) had won the attention of the world for decades. Oversaw the best-selling burgers in the U.S. ,
Many novelists have been aware of the power of the naming process. For example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced a sharp-tongued detective named Sherrinford Holmes and his dear friend Dr. Conan Doyle experimented a few times before settling on the sharp-edged “Sherlock” to replace the fiery “Sherrinford”, deciding that “Elementary, my dear Watson” was far more solid and resolute than “Elementary, my dear Saker”. seemed to.
Shakespeare always had a keen ear for the meaning of the names he gave to his characters; He wanted them to convey certain qualities that the actors’ ability alone could not do. (Think “Shylock” and “Malvolio,” “Iago” and “Sir Toby Belch”). Charles Dickens advanced the practice of naming to an art, with characters such as Uriah Heep, Martinet Grgrind, the dashing scoundrel Bounderby, the naïve Martin Thuzzlewit and the devious Squires. Their place names were cleverly chosen: in “Nicholas Nickleby” the awful boarding school is called “Dotboys Hall”—if you don’t get it, say the name out loud, pausing after the second and fifth syllables).
and in India
The art is also a science these days, as the study of the meaning of proper nouns has grown in importance and respect in recent years, becoming a subject in its own right, known as onomastics. I am in favor of this new academic effort, especially in view of Yogi Adityanath’s recent efforts. The desire to change any and all names associated with the Muslim past has led to Allahabad being changed to Prayagraj and Mughalsarai to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction.
The central government, losing no ground, has renamed the Mughal Garden Amrit Udyan, though the flowers have no distinct smell. If the Bharatiya Janata Party has its way, Ahmedabad may soon have to be re-christened Karnavati, and Mr Adityanath says Hyderabad should be Bhagyanagar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi even asked why the Gandhi family did not use Indiraji’s father’s surname instead. If he and his descendants had remained Nehru instead of Gandhi, would India’s political history have been different?
The question is absurd. But Indians are often the exception to all Western notions about the effect of names, whether on voters, readers or film audiences. After all, while conventional wisdom says that names should be easy to pronounce and remember, unpronounceability has rarely been a hindrance to political success in our country, especially since a simple enough name in one part of India may be a different name in another. Zubaan Hai: Ask a random selection of people from Uttar Pradesh to repeat the name of late Dravidian legend Nedunchezhiyan! Next, pick 10 South Indians and call them “Jawaharlal” – at least nine out of 10 will fail to tally up the second of the four “A’s”. (And conversely, most North Indians struggle to pronounce the name of my constituency, Thiruvananthapuram). On the Indian literary firmament, the brilliant Arundhati Roy managed to make a bestseller out of characters named Astappen and Rachel, names few of her readers have seen before or since, and quite devoid of Dickensian associations in most people’s minds. So much for the laborious recitations of Conan Doyle or Shakespeare.
And as far as the Indian film world goes, some actors adopted new labels of convenience, but wouldn’t it be better had Dilip Kumar enjoyed a different kind of career as Yusuf Khan, the name he left behind? Had given. Your way in Bollywood. It is hard to say that a Hindu name was necessary for a romantic hero to appeal to a majority audience. Certainly a series of unrelated Khans – Feroz, Amjad, Shah Rukh, Salman, Saif Ali and Aamir – have not felt the need to reinvent themselves (and the one who did “Sanjay”, a surname later in his career) “Khan” added to form one of the more secular screen credits of the films). And let us not forget that the highly successful Muslim actresses Waheeda Rehman, Nargis, Saira Banu and Mumtaz, not to mention the more recent Zeenat Aman, Parveen Babi, Shabana Azmi and Tabu, have proved time and again that Indian cinephiles love actors. Let’s look at the faces of Not their faith.
So it will take some time before we can issue Indian degrees in Onomastics. Yet, in a country where a Shiv Sena ideologue called himself Thackeray, a DMK chief minister took pride in answering Stalin’s surname, a budding politician took the name of his profession and called himself a pilot, and a minister, the late Murasoli Maran, proudly given a first name that was the title of the magazine he edited, may require any aspiring desi onomatopoeia to have a PhD in Indian politics first. And yet he would be unable to explain the foresight of a Gujarati parent named Modi, who named his son Narendra, so that the first word of each zodiac sign is a sacred Hindu invocation. Om Namo Nam-aha?!
Shashi Tharoor, MP (Congress Party) elected for the third time for Thiruvananthapuram, is the award-winning author of 24 books, including ‘Pride, Prejudice and Pandyatri: The Essential Shashi Tharoor’.