Friday, 13 April 2012

WHAT'S IN THE NAME

I had always thought that the name of a person is something that one gets from his/her parents. You like it or not, but it is your name. You get this name when you even do not know who you are, where you are, and  what you are doing. But you have got a name. A name which , willingly or not, is going to represent you. Whether you are present at a particular place or at a particular time, your name is going to represent you. This is something i always wanted to think over. Why is it so?

I am sure there are quite a many persons who do not like their own or family name, but they continue with the one that they have been told to be theirs. But they just spend their lives with the same name , without finding themselves courageous enough to change it.

A name usually exhibits the mood of the parents. There are some parents who leave the job of giving the name to a newly or about to be born baby, to their own parents. In such a situaiton, it needs atleast 4 persons (the parents of the mother and father of the baby) to find out a name. My experience shows that it is not that much easy for all to agree to one single name of the baby. At times such an exercise give birth to serious differences among the two families, which i time do effect the family lives of the parents of the baby too. But this is the system that a big number of parents usually adhere to, despite all possible problems that may come up.

In some families, particularly in Pakistan, the hard and fast rule is to find some suitable name from Quran. Under this practice, the parents usually have got no other way out but to accept the name, whatever that may be. Whether they like iit or not, they are not supposed to object.

Among the turkish people, finding a name for a newly born is very easy. Wast majority of the turkish people usually give the names of the grandparents to the newly born. A newly born male, for example is going to have the name of his paternal or maternal grand father. The same is for a newly born babygirl too. She is most probably going to end up with the name of her maternal or paternal grandmother.

Some parents however find themselves lucky enough to be given the right to select the name for their newly born themselves. That in fact is usually a big test for the parents, perhaps if it was their first chance. They usually do not agree at one single name. They usually end up arguing each other , for a long period. In the end they too agree on one particular name, but usually the party feels himself/herself overruled by the other.

Interestingly, with all this going on, nobody do care if the newly born baby, when grown up would be agreeing to spend his/her whole life with that particular name. But nobody thinks about this very basic problem. But it is a fact that quite many people do try but fail to find out why that particular name was given to them by their parents.

So what may be the solution?

The only solution in my opinion is to give the children a right to select their own name by themselves. But how?

Well do not expect everything to be answered by me

Let you too think and come up with your proposal.


2 comments:

  1. good:)
    i agree,,, but i think if we do not assign a name to a child,, then how can he come to knw that someone is calling him?

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  2. the writer has thrown the ball to the court of reader, it is probably he has not got any idea that how a child would name him by himself. Writer's this move shows his high intelligence level. But I don't find a way how baby can name him by himself

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