What’s with our damsels?
Been thinking about this now and then for quite some months. I guess this could be extended to the international arena too, but the desi sample space itself gives us a lot to think about. Most Indian girls’ names (when written in English) end with ‘a’ or ‘e’ or ‘i’ or some vowel-like sounding character. Just try saying aloud a few you know. Most times, if not all, you end up with your mouth wide open. For phonetic reasons.
On the other side, you have the boys’ names. They start with anything and end with, well, often anything but the vowels. Is there some pattern in these, some significance for us to infer? Is it one more of those that, having been handed down the generations, are practiced without the understanding that’s supposed to go along?
Filed under: girls, india, names | 1 Comment
Tags: girls, india, names
The Straight Bat 
I don’t think it is something handed over across generations. Most Sanskrit male names end in a vowel.
Vishwamitra, Vyasa, Bharadwaja, Koushika… But the Northern tongue cuts short the ‘a’ ending. So Vyasa becomes Vyas, Vishwamitra becomes Vishwamitr and so on. It kinda sounds cool also 😉
Extending the cool thing, women are uncool, and so…
In the south, they over-compensate by adding the suffix -n. So Rama, who became Ram up north, becomes Raman or Ramar, or Ramaiah etc. Krishna becomes Krishnan, and sometimes Krishnamachari (where the suffix is longer than the name itself)