What’s In A Name?

Parents put a lot of effort into coming up with the perfect baby name. Does it really matter?

I don’t love my name. That doesn’t mean I hate it, I just don’t have a strong attachment to it. Most likely, this is because I was rarely called my name growing up. I had a nickname (“Guddu”) that my family called me by throughout my entire childhood and into early adulthood. Since getting married (and especially since becoming a dad), my parents and brother have made a conscious effort to call me by my real name, but I’ll always be “Guddu” in my family members’ minds and hearts.

Excluding professional acquaintances, not many people have called me by my real name — I’ve been called Su, M-I-P, Sudiddy, and Mips (“meeps”), among other names, at various points in my life. None of these were derogatory, so I had no issue with any of these.

Due to my experience, I don’t place much weight on the importance of a name, but I may be on one extreme end of the spectrum. On the other end, you have Dale Carnegie, who espoused in his seminal book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” that “A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

Likewise, there’s a preponderance of recent research demonstrating how a person’s name impacts how he or she is perceived and treated. For example:

• An NYU study found that people with easier to pronounce names are generally “favored” more by others.
• A Marquette study found evidence to suggest people with common names were more likely to be hired (or the corollary research around “white-sounding” names being more likely to get selected for interviews, receive call backs, and get hired).
• A Yale/UCSD study that found students whose names start with A or B earn higher GPAs than students with C or D. I haven’t read the study, so not sure if the root cause hypothesis has to do with some sort of subconscious association of A names with A grades or the notion that students whose names are higher on the list (alphabetical order) get their name called more in class, etc.

In particular, the letter of name research piqued my interest because I have noticed a seeming trend of Indian (both US and India born) parents giving “A” names to their children, especially here in the Bay Area. For example, in my daughter’s class, there are at least 5 Indian kids (out of ~12 total students) whose name starts with an “A.” I don’t know if this is being influenced by the type of research mentioned above (implicitly or explicitly) or due to some sort of cultural Zeitgeist around “A” names. Even though my observations are purely anecdotal and based on small sample size, my gut feel is that this is not random. As proof of my scientific rigor, I Googled “most popular Indian names” and landed on a Pampers.in list of the “Top 100 Indian Baby Boy Names” — a whopping 31 of the 100 names on that list started with “A”!

When we were expecting our first child, we established a few basic criteria to guide our process:

• 2 syllables max (= easier to pronounce)
• Must have an Indian meaning, but does not have to be uniquely Indian (=cultural/heritage significance)
• Easy to pronounce by non-Indians (without help)
• No middle name (which is a break from the Gujarati tradition of using the father’s name as the child’s middle name, to further simplify things)

With this criteria in mind, we landed on Maya for our daughter. I thought Maya could not be mispronounced, but I was surprisingly mistaken — one of her school teachers would pronounce her name, “May-a” (like the month of May), so I guess no rule is ever “fool-proof.” Despite that, Maya still seems like a home run choice.

On the other hand, we did not have a strong list of names ready when our son was born because he came three weeks early (and because we were secretly hoping for a girl, so we had more girl names on the list). We ultimately chose Ravi, which broke my easy to pronounce requirement (but given the “May-a” experience, one can argue this rule has been rendered moot). Phonetically, it’s pronounced ‘Ruh-vi,’ which is not inherently difficult, but since it is spelled R-A-V-I, he often gets called “Raw-vi” or “Ræ-vi” (as in apple). When choosing his name, I practiced yelling his name, “Ravi!” (for when I will get mad at him in the future) and also tested out loud, “Introducing President Ravi Patel.” Both flowed pretty well, so we locked it in.

As immigrants or immigrant children, the debate between choosing an “ethnic” vs. a “western” name is one that probably stirs up unnecessary emotion.

On one end, we all live in this melting pot where we get to experience so many great things from different cultures (German Beer, taquerias, hip hop, etc). In exchange for that experience, some level of assimilation is the price of admission. If we can eat foods from different countries, listen to music from different countries, date different people, then what’s the harm in giving your child a name with a different cultural origin?

On the other hand, others argue that “adopting” a Western name represents a subversive form of cultural oppression and a literal “whitewashing” of minority communities. As Kelly Tran of Star Wars fame wrote in a recent NY Times op-ed:

It reinforced within me rules that were written before I was born, rules that made my parents deem it necessary to abandon their real names and adopt American ones — Tony and Kay — so it was easier for others to pronounce, a literal erasure of culture that still has me aching to the core.

And somewhere in the middle, you have the pragmatists who choose the path of least resistance — “If an easier to pronounce names is advantageous…and besides my name isn’t the only thing that defines my identity.”

On this topic, I sit in the center with a slant towards maintaining some cultural identity via your name. I am pragmatic enough that when I order food at a restaurant, I’ll say my name is “Sam” — if it saves 5 seconds of having to re-pronounce my name or spell it out, it’s worth it since I’m never meeting that server again. Likewise, choosing a name like Maya that has Indian meaning (affection in common vernacular; illusion in religious context) but is also found in other communities is another example of my centrist pragmatism. But at the same time, I do believe that maintaining a link to our cultural heritage shouldn’t be completely sacrificed because it’s that blend of cultures in all of its elements that makes this country special and unique.

Even though our kids are named Maya and Ravi, they both have nicknames like I did. Maya is “Boonie,” which was derived from the Gujarati word “ben” (sister). I once jokingly noted that Ravi looked like Carlos, the baby from “The Hangover.” My mom heard Carlos, pronounced it “Carlo,” and that name stuck. If there’s a silver lining, Maya hears her real name called regularly enough now at school, that she will quickly self correct anyone: “It’s not May-a, its Maya!” “It’s not Boonie, it’s Maya.”

Maya and Ravi. Boonie and Carlo. At the end of the day, what’s in a name?

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