What’s in a name?

Written By: Kayalvizhi J.

You probably hear it more than anything else, you either love it or hate. You never use it yourself, but everyone else uses it. What is it? That’s right, your name. Names are a significant part of a person’s identity. In giving children personal names, Tamils are known to follow uncommon practices.

Although not practiced widely today, traditionally Tamil names were not just given lightly – a child had to be named within 12 days of birth, there was an appropriate number of syllables a name could have based on the time of birth, the final syllable of the name followed a phonetic structure, and certain names and letters were to be avoided. Tamils also chose personal names which conveyed a desirable semantic quality – such as power, happiness, success, prosperity, beauty, victory, greatness or devotion or a highly esteemed abstract quality – such as sathiyam (truth) or azhagu (beauty). The second part, or ending of a name usually is also derived from a common suffix with such qualities. For example, durai (lord), rajan (king), devi (lady), vati (lady) are all common suffixes.

The devotional name is also a popular one – they have taken such prominence that people have forgotten what the name itself means, and only what God or Lord it represents – for example, Murugan means handsome male, however many only know it as Lord Murugan. Tamils also have in the past named based on non-Tamil historical figures paired with a name of Tamil relevance – such as Lenin Kumara-Samy. Other rules also applied when choosing a name for a child, such as the first two males of a family are named after the grandfathers and the first two daughters are named after the grandmothers. In fact, the Tamil word ‘peran’ meaning grandson has been derived from this fact ‘per name’ peran actually means the boy who bears the name, and ‘pertti’ means the girl who bears the name.

We however, have been moving away from choosing names of Tamil relevance to other names. With Tamils choosing now to give children shorter names and more Anglo-Saxon names because they believe it is more convenient and employable (Krishnan becoming Kris). But doing so, we will loose the Tamil name our children have – which also includes part of their identity. We should bring back family names that retain our culture, and we should name our children after significant Tamil figures.In fact, Tamils are one of the only indigenous groups that derive names from other cultures as well, we borrow words and names from Sanskrit, Judeo-Christian (English, Hebrew and Portuguese) and Urdu. This however, meddles with the authenicity of our culture and identity. Let’s take the name Xavier, a name that many Tamil Christians use. There is no way to write Xavier in Tamil, Ceviyar is the only way to transliterate Xavier into Tamil. We are choosing names that we cannot even transliterate into Tamil properly.

But other than names itself, what most people find different about Tamil names, is the way we use last names. In Tamil society, once a woman marries, her surname becomes her husband’s first name. Let’s use a simple example. Take the name Kajal Aggarwal. Kajal being the first name and Aggarwal being the last name. Say Kajal Aggarwal decided to marry Karthi Sivakumar. Her name would be Kajal Karthi, not Kajal Sivakumar as would be in many other cultures. Any children she has will also be given her husband’s first name.

With this structure, it is easy to loose your ability to track down your ancestors. Like some cultures where a family name is given, Tamils family names change with every generation. How beneficial is it really to us? If you look at coming times, with more Tamils choosing Anglo-Saxon names over Tamil names, how will our successors track down their genealogy if they wanted to? Initially, Tamils used a caste name as a “second last name,” one which just came with their first and last name. For instance, Kajal Aggarwal would be followed by a caste name ________ (Caste Name) and Kajal Karthi would be followed by a caste name___________ (Caste Name). This structure would have a link back to the caste name even if the surnames were different, allowing for people to track their ancestors. This was thought to link people, however, with this no longer being practiced today (for good reason!), Tamils lose their ability to track down their ancestors by name. A Tamil person could never track down someone using a geneology tracker and find out about their ancestors using name as a marker.

If you look at the Jewish community or Chinese communities or other communities, there are certain names that you know belong to one family or that are inherently Jewish – Steinberg, Rittenberg or Chen for instance. You know that someone is Jewish based on their name, and you can track down the history of their family because they all have the same name.

I argue that we should stop the practice of taking the first names of our husbands and fathers and instead start using a family name, one that would leave a trackable lineage. My father knows his grandfather’s name, but he does not remember the names of anyone before that, had we had a common family name, we would have known. Secondly, the names that we do take, need to be of Tamil influence and relevence. We should stop borrowing Sanskrist and Judeo-Christian names – because that doesn’t reflect our identity and it doesn’t grow our culture. Names are a significant part not only of one’s identity, but of a national identity and a cultural identity. We should take pride in our Tamil names, after all, we have the most beautiful names.