The Name Game

Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha.

Does that ring any bell? Well its the full name of the famous Indian Athlete P T Usha. As a kid in a quiz contest I was asked if I know the full name of P T Usha (Prior to that I used to think her name was Petee Usha and not P T Usha.. How stupid of me). That day I came to know about the P T being her initials and not the name Petee.
Anyways I didn't get any points for that question and lost the quiz contest (FYI-There were many other questions also which were responsible for my loss). Then it was Quiz Master's turn to answer the unanswered questions. Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha, how did he pronounce that, I asked myself. I still cannot pronounce it and to be very frank I still don't remember it. This time the unanswered question was answered by the Best when it comes to answering the questions. GOOGLE.

Google also told me what does P T Usha's name actually signifies. Well her name has three parts, the IP Address, Subnet Mask and the Default Gateway. Figure out which one is which as per the explanation below.
The first name Pilavullakandi indicates the geographical origin, The Second name Thekkeparambil is the name of her "house" and finally the final part Usha is her Name.

One fine day a friend [I'm not going to take her name :)] asked me why do you all Biharis have two names. She was obviously referring to my two bihari classmates Aditya Tumul, Anshu Pratik and myself. I said, Good question.. I'll ask my GrandPa and will let you know.

But it really made me think. What if my name was something like that of P T Usha, B P Vivek or B P Vatsal. Or what if my GrandPa had known that I'll be studying and working in karnataka and named me according to karanataka tradition as B B Vivek or B B Vatsal or what I was named in the common north Indian way as Vivek Poddar.
All of it sounds so UnCool!!! (No offences to anyone!!!)

Vivek Vatsal or for that Aditya Tumul sounds so Cool and so Unique. Its so easy to get a mail-id with your full name (You never want your id to be Pilavullakandi_Thekkeparambil_Usha@gmail.com ... Nobody will ever mail you. Even the spammers and You will never get a message saying abhishek_sinha@gmail.com is not available. would you like to have ur id as abhishek_sinha_2232_36273@gmail.com)

Anyways I thought and thought and then thought some more. Why did my grandpa wanted to hide my family name. Why is my name not Vivek Poddar. (Though i dont have any regrets.. I am so much in love with my name )
Why does most of the biharis don't have their family name like other north Indians. Why is Kumar and Kumari most preferred second name in bihar (Thank God my name was not Vivek Kumar..or something more common like Abhishek Kumar. Whichever School I went to had Abhishek Kumar 1 Abhishek Kumar 2, Abhishek Kumar 3.. As if there is a 47% reservation for people with name Abhishek Kumar.)

I didn't have any answer to it. And I was not to keen on doing a Google on it, so i asked the person who knows it all. The Bond himself, Aditya Tumul. Abe why is your name Aditya Tumul and not Aditya Srivastava (Aditya Srivastava sounds so filmy. I kind of remember a movie with Abhishek Bachchan as Aditya Srivastava ). The Bond had an answer.
In Bihar the caste system is very prominent and people try not to reveal their caste as much as possible. He may be correct but I don't think it is very convincing.
I still don't have any concrete explanation for it. And I welcome if anyone having two names (People with second name Kumar are also welcome ) can drop in with their comments and the reason.


More about names.. coming soon..
Wait till


Vatsy-Speaks


JUST FYI
Wat google says about surnames....

Indian surnames, where formalized, fall into seven general types.
Patronymics and Ancestry, where the father's name or an ancester's given name is used in its original form or in a derived form (e.g. Aggarwal or Agrawal or Agrawala derived from the ancestor Agrasen).
Occupations ( Chaudhury, Patel or Patil meaning Village Headman, Gandhi, Kulkarni, Kapadia, Nadkarni, Patwardhan, Patwari, Chamar) and priestly distinctions (Trivedi, Chaturvedi, Twivedi, Purohit, Bhattar, Mukhopadhyay.) In addition many Parsi, Bohra and Gujarati families have used English trade names as last names since the 18th and 19th centuries (Contractor, Engineer, Builder).
Caste or clan names (Gaudar, Vaish, Parmar, Kamma, Sindhi).
Place names or names derived from places of ancestral origin (Marwari, Gawaskar, Mangeshkar, Kapoor, Karnad).
Muslim surnames, generally following the same rules used in Pakistan. Khan among the most popular, often signifying Afghan/Central Asian descent.
Bestowed titles or other honorifics (titles bestowed by Kings, Nawabs and other nobles before British Raj (Wali, Rai, Rao) and those bestowed by the British (Rai, Bahadur). In Bengal, it is also common custom to create hybrid surnames based on the previous last names and new titles (Raichoudhury)
Names indicating nobility or feudal associations or honorifics (Varma, Singh, Burman, Raja, Tagore, Thakur)
Colonial Surnames forced on natives based on tax or after religious conversion, particularly in Goa which was under Portuguese control (DeCruz, Pinto). Often, surnames of Portugene noble families were used as the surnames of the converted.
The convention is to write the first name followed by middle names and surname. It is common to use the father's first name as the middle name even though it is not universal. In some Indian states like Maharashtra, official documents list the family name first, followed by a comma and the given names.
It is customary for wives to take the surname of their husband after marriage. In modern times, in urban areas at least, this practice is not universal. In some rural areas, particularly in North India, wives may also take a new first name after their nupitals. Children inherit their surnames from their father.
In some parts of Southern India, no formal Surname is used, either because none is designated or because the family has decided to forgo its existing clan name. This practice is prevalent in Kerala where someone who belongs to the Nair (a corruption of "Nyakar" pointing to a warrior past) clan for example, could forgo its usage completely in modern times, preferring just to use the initials of the father, ancestral village or "house" instead. An example of this usage is the name of olympian P. T. Usha (Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha, where the first name indicates the geographical origin and the second is the name of her "house"). Wife or child takes the given name of the husband or father (Usha married Satish, and may therefore be called Usha Satish or simply S. Usha).
Sikhs generally use the words Singh ("lion") and Kaur ("princess") as surnames added to the otherwise unisex first names of men and women, respectively. It is also common to use a different surname after Singh in which case Singh or Kaur are used as middle names (Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Surinder Kaur Badal). In modern times, many Sikh women also use "Singh" as their last name following the western concept of patronymic or marital inheritance (Surinder K. Singh). Other middle names or honorifics that are sometimes used as surnames include Kumar, Dev, Lal, and Chand.
The modern day spellings of names originated when families translated their surnames to English, with no standardization across the country. Variations are regional, based on how the name was translated from the local language to English in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries during British rule. Therefore, it is understood in the local traditions that Agrawal and Aggarwal represent the same name derived from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab respectively. Similarly, Tagore derives from Bengal while Thakur is from Hindi-speaking areas. The officially-recorded spellings tended to become the standard for that family. In the modern times, some states have attempted at standardization, particularly where the surnames were corrupted because of the early British insistence of shortening them for convinience. Thus Bandopadhyay became Banerji, Mukhopadhay became Mukherji, Chattopadhyay became Chatterji etc. This coupled with various other spelling variations created several surnames based on the original surnames. The West Bengal Government now insists on re-converting all the variations to their original form when the child is enrolled in school.
Some parts of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia have similar patronymic customs as that of India.



Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surname