I have read announcements in the newspaper about people formally changing their names. I thought I might also do the same, as I have decided to change the name of this blog. Well, choosing a name is not so easy. I thought I just needed one name for the blog and then Blogspot asked me
for a user name, a titile and google user ID and my overworked brain
just stalled.The name 'EverydayIndianwoman' was a really bad choice, showed a total lack of imagination on my part. I was in a hurry to just start blogging before the concept of blogs ( as opposed to microblogs) went out of existence in the virtual world. In my hurry, I just thought of the first name I thought was appropriately anonymous and also reflected what I was. It was actually based on this song titled 'I'm everywoman' that was the title song for the 'Oprah Winfrey Show'. Anyway, end result, the name I chose somehow gives a completely different picture about the blog.
What I realised slowly is that the combination of two simple words, 'Indian' and 'woman' on the internet, is not so nice and simple afterall. So I decided to just go ahead and change the name of the blog for the sake of simplicity, honesty, anonymity and also gender equality. I do not want the name of the blog to reflect the fact that I am Indian or a woman, that is for sure........
This got me thinking about the people who take the extreme step of changing their names. They must have probably gone through something similar for them to make such a drastic change. Just imagine trying to change a name like 'Saravanan' to something like 'Rahul' or 'Rakesh'. Does it make the person friendlier or more approachable or acceptable?
These days, a lot of people try to name their kids in such a way that the name does not reflect their caste or community or even region. Gone are the days when you had south Indians with long, hard to pronounce names. People want their children to have short trendy names. Sanskrit names which do not have connection to any caste or community are becoming more popular than the traditional names in India. The good thing about this is the equality it brings in. The bad thing is that it makes us conform to the western way of naming ourselves, with a first name and last name. May be, in years to come, the long traditional names would eventually become family names. Then we would have the Krishnans, Subramaniams, Balakrishnans, Srininvasans, whose children would be named Sidharth, Raghav, Smrithi and so on.
Coming back to my own blog, I hope this name change has not caused any inconvenience to anybody. If it has, you will have to excuse me for the same......And to all my regular blog readers (which may be 5 in number), thankyou for reading my blog. I know you will continue to read my blog, whatever be its name.
What I realised slowly is that the combination of two simple words, 'Indian' and 'woman' on the internet, is not so nice and simple afterall. So I decided to just go ahead and change the name of the blog for the sake of simplicity, honesty, anonymity and also gender equality. I do not want the name of the blog to reflect the fact that I am Indian or a woman, that is for sure........
This got me thinking about the people who take the extreme step of changing their names. They must have probably gone through something similar for them to make such a drastic change. Just imagine trying to change a name like 'Saravanan' to something like 'Rahul' or 'Rakesh'. Does it make the person friendlier or more approachable or acceptable?
These days, a lot of people try to name their kids in such a way that the name does not reflect their caste or community or even region. Gone are the days when you had south Indians with long, hard to pronounce names. People want their children to have short trendy names. Sanskrit names which do not have connection to any caste or community are becoming more popular than the traditional names in India. The good thing about this is the equality it brings in. The bad thing is that it makes us conform to the western way of naming ourselves, with a first name and last name. May be, in years to come, the long traditional names would eventually become family names. Then we would have the Krishnans, Subramaniams, Balakrishnans, Srininvasans, whose children would be named Sidharth, Raghav, Smrithi and so on.
Coming back to my own blog, I hope this name change has not caused any inconvenience to anybody. If it has, you will have to excuse me for the same......And to all my regular blog readers (which may be 5 in number), thankyou for reading my blog. I know you will continue to read my blog, whatever be its name.
