When did Aatmika become Amelie?
Choosing a name can represent a lot more than we realize.
Back when our grandparents first started to assimilate into western society adopting an English name was just easier for pronunciation purposes. It made you less different, more relatable, and easier to accept. Sunil became Sunny, Rajesh became Ricky and Zoya became Zoe, and so forth.
Flash forward 50 years and I’m glad to say the skill of foreign name pronunciation has progressed considerably. That’s not to say suspiciously English-sounding nicknames don’t still exist but I certainly haven’t come across anyone giving me a different name for the sake of ease.
What you have now is next-generation South Asian adults actively choosing to give their children distinctively non-South Asian names.
Introducing Maden Khakoo, Tristen and Amelie Patel, Bella Kara, Caleb Parikh. It’s actually rather astonishing the change that has occurred in the last 30 years or so.
Back in my day (ha I’m not even that old) brown folk had identifiably brown names. Priya, Amit, Nisha, Nadia, Ali, Shakeeb, Heena, Deepa you get my drift. I can genuinely say, hand on heart that when I was in school I could count the number of Asian kids who had non-Asian names. These days it’s the complete opposite, finding a child with an authentic cultural name is not easy. Religious names denoting an actual faith are still common however amongst believers, names like Mohammed, Omar, Fatima, Krishna, etc.
So my question is this, are we in 2021 still trying to fit in and make names easier to pronounce, or is the act of giving your Indian child a distinctively non culturally identifying name simply due to personal preference?
If so, why do we prefer someone else’s cultural identity over our own?
At this point, I must say this seems to be a very born and bred-in-the-West phenomenon. The majority of parents from back home are still flying the flag of traditional names, you certainly won’t find an Amelie Patel in their new families.
When talking about this I can’t help but reminisce back to a very hilarious UK comedy series created in the ’90s titled Goodness Gracious Me. One of their most memorable sketches depicts the lives of “the Coopers” aka the Kapoors and their die-hard ambition to be as English as possible. Changing their names, attending church, going to the pub, and so on. It’s really rather funny and yet somewhat telling perhaps.
Here we are in 2021 with a huge rise in neutral names void of any cultural connection and it doesn’t stop there. Christmas (Easter too) seems to be the new festival for all, when did it become so necessary for us Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs to celebrate someone else’s religious festival with such vigor? Just shy of going to church our children are exposed to the works, Christmas trees, Santa sacks, stockings, hell we even actively get our children to write to a Christian saint in order to get presents!
I know Christmas is a global season and has become an incredibly commercial event but at the heart, it’s still a Christian festival.
You sure as hell wouldn’t get a Hindu fasting for the day or a Muslim lighting a diva lamp and yet enjoying Western traditions is adopted and made one's own with immediate effect.
Yes, it’s all innocent fun but I wonder if this going all out for Xmas is giving birth to a new generation of kids who will be completely ignorant and apathetic to their own ethnic traditions. Christmas is such a magical time of year and a perfectly positioned holiday making it so easy to love and enjoy. But should we be adapting it to the point where it becomes bigger and better than anything from our own heritage?
This isn't about religion, nor has it got anything to do with mixed unions. This is about being a South Asian growing up in the West and deciding how much of an authentic identity we want. Knowing where you are from, having an educated knowledge of the past and what struggles and sacrifices were made before is important. Knowing one of the reasons our beloved Britain is so great is thanks to the trillions (yep that’s how much it equates to in today’s money) taken from our homelands is important.
I know what you’re thinking whoa this is getting rather heavy-handed, we did start off talking about names after all. In my humble opinion, there has clearly been a cultural shift from the decisions our parents made to the ones the parents of today are making.
There is a reason why our parents named us Priya, Amit, Trishna, Miasha and why we named our kids Penny, Amelie, Tristen, and Maden.
Is it because we want to be less Asian or because we just don’t want our kids to feel awkward like we did back in the day? Perhaps it’s simply a way for today's parents to modernize their choices and stand out from within their own cultures as opposed to trying to blend in with another. Either way, I can’t say I really know.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with combining cultures and taking the best from both but when one seeps into the point where it starts to erode the other then what are we left with? As a child, I remember feeling so embarrassed by my traditional clothes, food, and customs.
Everything about being brown was up for ridicule.
I sure as hell don’t want my child feeling the same, but diluting who she is, who we are, and how we do things isn’t the answer. No, in fact, that needs to be magnified. Diversity is pretty people, especially when it comes to the kind of color and spice we can bring.
Now let me make myself clear this is by no means an invitation to send your kids into school smelling like last night's curry. That will never be acceptable, not now, not never.
As South Asians, we will never be able to tick that “English” box on the ethnicity forms, our box will always be Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or other. We are who we are, so tick that box with pride. I for one will try to make a concerted effort to enjoy the best of both worlds but will never put another culture over my own.
After all, it’s better to be an authentic version of yourself than a diluted, in-between, not sure what I am a version of someone else.
