When I turned 18 I thought I ought to change my name. And change it to something not easily identifiable with one country or religion or gender or one anything.
The musician Prince was then toying with the idea of calling himself by a symbol and being known as The Artiste Formerly Known as Prince, which is quite a mouthful but also contains his old name. I am not sure what it said on his passport. I can see the official at immigration saying, “Sir, we want your current name, not your earlier one …”
Anyway, I thought I would call myself after a musical note – C sharp suggested itself – but even that had connotations in Western music. Perhaps, I thought, a grunt would be ideal.
“Hello, I am Harrumph, glad to meet you,” I might say at a party, or “My name is Grrrr,” or something like that. You wouldn’t then have any preconceived notions. Muslim? Hindu? North India, South India? Well-known family, unknown family? Nephew of so-and-so? No way you could have known any of these things, and that was terribly attractive.
But 18 came and went, my natural laziness asserted itself and I continue to use the name you see at the top of this column. Lethargy has saved us from more disasters than we acknowledge.
But take Kanye West. The singer will henceforth be known as ‘Ye’, he informs us. No first name, no middle name, no last name, just ‘Ye’. Like Bono and Cher. Kanye says he made the change because ‘Ye’ is the most common word used in the Bible. I don’t know about his music, but his arithmetic is terrible. A simple search will show that the two most common words in the King James Bible are “and” and “the.”
But I suspect if Mr. West had decided to call himself “And”, he would have been addressed as “Andy” and that, as everybody knows, is the 401st most popular boys’ name and 5,129th most popular girls’ name. “The” holds out more promise, but I imagine if Kanye really wanted to have a unique name, he should have named himself after the full stop, which I believe is the most commonly used punctuation mark in the Bible.
He could have also named himself after the sound of two fingers flicking or the crash of breaking mirrors or the smell of a red rose. I merely hand out these suggestions for future name-changers who want to be unique.
I can sympathise with Kanye. In some quarters, he is known as Mr. Kim Kardashian, which must cause psychological damage.
Personally, I think all of us should be given an option at 18 (or 21) to decide whether we are happy to continue with our given names or if we prefer to change them. It would absolve parents of blame and pass on the responsibility to the individual.
Our original names should be mere place-holders, marking time till our real names are decided later on in life.
(Suresh Menon is Contributing Editor, The Hindu).
