Life’s like that: When age rechristens relationships

Strange are the ways many people — did I say Indians — name their babies or call their babies. In the Internet era, baby names are literally on your fingertips. Google with key words such as “modern names for Indian baby girls” or “top 1,000 baby names of 2025”, you will be swimming in a sea of choices.

A simple search for “names for babies” coughed up 910 million sites in 0.26 seconds, but picking the right pearl from this ocean is easier said than done. Strangely, search optimisation with “names for baby girls” produced 2.5 billion sites in 0.33 seconds, while a search with “names for baby boys” gave half that number — 1.09 billion results in 0.37 seconds.

There are sponsored name sites managed by international baby care products such as Pampers, FirstCry and Super Bottoms, and even insurance companies.

So, choosing a baby name from the Internet is not child’s play. It’s a Herculean task that requires a wealth of patience. Which is why most couples start the process as early as their dating days. 

“Honey, what do you want to call our baby?” the boy asks the love of his life over a candle-lit dinner.

“Oh, my grandma chose one on my menarche. Liz. Isn’t it beautiful? I love it, darling. She was my great grandma.”

It smacks of female chauvinism for the boy. “But shouldn’t it be our choice?” 

 It takes several such candle-lit evenings and breakups before a politically correct name is finally conceived.

On the Indian scene, you can do a thesis on the diverse naming conventions across the country. Cultural, religious and clan influences take the first place in such an exercise. A major chunk of Indian names — both male and female — are synonyms of a pantheon of deities and mythological characters. Other considerations include astrological, familial, and symbolic as in the case of words with positive vibes.

Creating combination names — taking elements of both parents’ names — is a hilarious exercise that often results in mind-blowing ones. My neighbour back home came up with a horrendous one by crossbreeding the first two letters of his wife’s and his own names: Sheela and Rohit.

Ecological considerations have been in practice in India since time immemorial as elements such as air, fire, space and water, as well as geographical features like mountains, rivers, and oceans often come into play in choosing names, especially because such features are attributed to Hindu deities.

But babies can wait. In India, picking a name to call your partner itself is rocket science. In traditionally fundamental areas of the subcontinent, irrespective of religions, calling husbands by their name is considered disrespectful. Such chauvinistic traditions are, in fact, blissfully nurtured and justified by women themselves. So, they coin funny salutations like haan, jee, aap, suniye to, papu ka papa, sambhlo cho (in Gujarati), or the same names that the couples’ children would call them by, such as baba-ji, papa-ji, etc.

In my family, the naming ceremony was strangely initiated by a four-year-old girl in the neighbourhood. It was too early for me to decide what to call her when wifey was brought home after a hasty marriage. And this little chirpy lass, who found her name more than a mouthful, altered the world Prayaga to Pagaga, then to Yagu which my youngest sister, funnily enough, modified to Gayu. This sobriquet stuck for decades — until recently when I unknowingly changed it to “Amma”, or mother. And then she started to call me “Acha”, meaning father.

Did both of us, who have lived most of our lives outside India, fall into the trap of resurging fundamentalism in India? Such a tradition typically derives from the idea that women should regard their spouse as a deity. In such a scenario, I can understand my wife abstaining from calling me by my given name. But I am not sure when and why I started to call her ‘Mother’, but I have certainly started to like it. Out of respect or otherwise, I feel good about it.

Or is it because of her recent ailment? Maybe I thought such a sweet word could be a balm to her and help soothe her shaken soul. Despite her initial resistance, she seems to enjoy the new title. Maybe because she feels I am finally grateful enough to place her on a pedestal as tall as my mother’s.

Or did this happen after I recently started to call Bengaluru my home? Maybe the palm trees majestically swaying in the wind, or the women slogging in the lush green gardens inside the gated community, or the giant jackfruit trees offering a redoubt for little mynas and sparrows are weaving my reminiscences of the good old childhood days with my mother in a Kerala hamlet?

All is good that ends well. So, let me cherish my new Mother and the new childhood moment.