Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Do you struggle with your name ? Yes, I do.

"Hello, I am ****, I am calling from *******. May I speak to Ms. Hruaii?"


Needless to say I am impressed with his right pronunciation of my name, straight from a written document, without any prior contact or not having him learn 'how to'. This is the first time it happens, I mean, coming from outside my community. He must be either good at pronunciation or has/had a friend with the same name as mine. Either way, I am impressed.

Anyone with a difficult name will know the pain of having a tongue-twister name, especially when it comes to outside our community. I have read the advantage of having a name with easy to pronounce and I agree with it. It is easy to remember and easy to call, even among a circle of friends. There is an underlying power of calling or using names while talking to someone. When people call you by your name, you feel more close with them, instead of having them never call you by your name. I also have a bad habit of not calling by someone's name when I am not comfortable pronouncing it, which makes a little gap (that's how I feel).

I was known by the name 'hruaii' until I joined college in Shillong. Looking back now, during inter, I guess everyone was fined with 'hruaii'. On my first day of college, our teacher, JB ma'am read out our names from the register book. She struggled from the third syllable. She said that it was a very big name and asked me if I was fine to go with just "Vanlal". Well, it became a convenient way to later introduce myself by this name. When some of my new friends still struggle with this, I give them "VL". However, throughout my college days, everyone calls me by the name 'hruaii', except JB ma'am. So, the name 'hruaii' came up with all kinds of distorted spellings and pronunciation, which was rather funny in their own way. During the initial days in the University, our Telugu classmates called all the northeast girls by the name 'Ching', which was the easiest to remember and pronounce.

So, I conclude that if I ever get a child of my own, I'm gonna name him/her a very simple name. :D 

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