“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” William Shakespeare penned this line in his tragedy Romeo and Juliet. It simply means that names are irrelevant. I don’t agree with him.
I feel that our names are our first identity. We are our name first and, only then, whoever or whatever we are or do. And since we have a name, it becomes imperative for us to ensure that it is used properly and with the correct spelling because a misspelt name could be that of someone else.
My name is (and is correctly spelt as) Vijay Shekhar.
Some five years ago, I was travelling from Chennai to Jamshedpur via Kolkata. I took a flight from Chennai and landed at Kolkata airport around 11 a.m., and was scheduled to take a train from Howrah for the onward journey to Jamshedpur. Now, Kolkata (I have lived in the city for around five years) has a history of getting my name wrong both verbally and many a time in writing too.
At the airport, I queued up at the pre-paid taxi counter. When my turn came, I said ‘Howrah’ to the executive seated at the window, and then this is how our conversation progressed.
Executive: Naam? (Name?)
Me: Vijay.
Executive (repeating): Bijoy.
Me: It’s ‘Vijay’.
Executive: ‘Bhee’ for ‘Bhictory’ toh? (‘V’ for ‘Victory’ right?)
Me: Yes.
In the pre-paid slip, my name got printed as ‘Vijoy’. Though unhappy about it, I couldn’t do anything about the ‘o’, which has absolutely no role to play in my name. And somewhere I had accepted being called ‘Bijoy’ in Kolkata... and considered ‘Vijoy’ to be a decent move towards the right spelling.
Anyway, a pre-paid taxi slip is not any official, government or legal record, where the name and the spelling has to be right. Once the trip is over, the slip is torn off and disposed.
But when it comes to government records, the name and the way it is spelt matters.
I have a colleague named J. Radhakrishnan, wherein ‘J’ stands for his father’s name. He is very casual about his name. In only one of his government IDs is his name mentioned correctly, while in the others, it’s either stated as just ‘Radhakrishnan’ (without the ‘J’) or as ‘Radha Krishnan’ (with a space between ‘Radha’ and ‘Krishnan’). He has got into trouble several times on account of this.
Once it so happened that while applying for a government scheme as a beneficiary, he submitted an ID that mentioned his name as Radha Krishnan. Seeing the name on the ID, the officer making the entry entered his name as Mrs. Radha Krishnan. When he showed up to claim the benefit, he was refused the same, as it was for Mrs. Radha Krishna and he was a man. It took him around two months to set the record straight.
On another occasion, while I was waiting for my turn at the immigration counter at the airport, I overheard an argument between a lady and an immigration officer. Apparently, the names on her passport and visa did not match. It was ‘Geetha’ on the passport and ‘Geeta’ on the visa. Now this is a typical issue, wherein names like Smita, Shruti and Chitra are spelt so in the northern parts of the country, whereas in the south, an ‘H’ tends to get added, and they become Smitha, Shruthi and Chithra, respectively. This is exactly what Ms. Geetha fell victim to, wherein some visa official nonchalantly recorded her name as ‘Geeta’, which perhaps even she did not notice.
My name can be written in several ways in different parts of the country. It could become Vijaya Sekar, Bijay Sekhar, Bijoy Sekhar, Vijay Shekar, Vijai Sekar, and so on. But I have now decided that I would put my foot down until my name is written as Vijay Shekhar in any official, government or legal document.
So when someone asks “What’s in a name”, the answer is: Everything.
