[Ifroham4]

Dear Dr SR Ji

Wow! Terrific amount of research and a very informative post. Thanks.

But I have to tell you, that is close to impossible getting to the bottom of it all.
The general trend and style world-wide, is to shorten names - we have been seeing
for sometime now - Robert becoming Bob, William becoming Bill, Mathew becoming Mat,
Edward becoming Ted, Michael becoming Mike etc. So much so, the tale goes that Eisenhower's
mother was sick and tired of this trend of shortening names and named him Dwight, which she
thought couldn't be shortened further. But they called him "Ike" !

The next thing that one notices is the trend of handing down professions as surnames -
Doctor, Engineer, Batliwala are common Parsi surnames. These are as common as Dwivedhis,
Trivedhis and Chaturvedhis!

Essentially, these were 'titles' conferred upon people who had attained certain level of learning of the
Vedic Scriptures. How, with the passage of time these came to be inherited surnames by the descendants
is a mystery. The same goes with Dixits, Purohits, Sharmas and Shastris. Even the name Vajpayee is an
inherited surname which was a title conferred upon one who was a specialist in performing the
" Vajapeya Yagnam ".

Many who have never received "Deeksha" carry the surname Dixit and so with people who
have been to a Temple [nor have any inclination to do so], answer to the surname "Purohit"!

It has sort of become "out-of-fashion" to name a boy Sokkalingam / Ramaswamy / Sethuraman/ or a
girl Sugantha Kundalambal / Oppillal / Sigappi. Nobody is ever going to name his son " Umai Uru Baagan" /
" Ilam Pirai Chudan" anymore. These are names that only the poetically inclined will find in
some research paper. One can find ample supplies of Piyushs, Amits, Sachins, Kirans etc.

Then we come across people being named after their Parents' heros. One can find numerous Boses and
Gandhis, who know no Bengali or Gujarati, Stalins who know no Russian and Kennedys who can't
spell their names correctly in English !

In the midst of all this, we find a very unusual name " Aaradhya " [ meaning worthy of worship ]
- named by the Grand Father, who is himself the son of a well known poet - Harivansh Rai Bachan.

Doctor, as you would already know, even 'Vyasa' was a title. The Veda Vyasa that we commonly refer to
and is credited with writing the Mahabharatha is "Krishna Dwaipayana Veda Vyasa ".

Getting to bottom of it all, is a tough as, Doc.

After all, " What's in a name ? " - William [not Bill] Shakespeare in Romero & Juliet .

Guruvethunai
Yay Yem