[brraverishhh]

namaste everyone.

Not every parent names their child with full knowledge of the meaning and connotations of their chosen name. More often than not, they choose short and fancy Sanskrit names, as has been pointed out here.

• A girl child I know is named aparNA: although it is a name for LalitA devI, it means 'leafless', a rather not so auspicious connotation.

• Another example is the name nivRtti given to a girl child. I wonder if the parents want the child to turn away from the pravRtti mArgam and take up saMnyAsa!

• sthANu--a lifeless log of wood, is a name for Shiva in his form of dakShiNAmUrti. When I was in school, our headmaster had the name sivathANup piLLai.

And then there are these reckless spellings and pronunciations of names.

• kokilA--cuckoo, when pronounced as gokilA becomes a pestle or plough!

• What does a parent mean when he/she calls their child shruti but writes the name as sruti--stream, fall of snow?

• The name shiva for a male child is invariably pronounced and written as siva--one who sews or stiches.

• shaNmukham becomes sanmugham or sanmukam not knowing that while mukham is face, mukam is the smell of cowdung!

• While svAmi is a master or lord, its common usage as sAmi means 'incompletely, imperfectly, partially, half'.

• The long vowels that are characteristic of female names in Sanskrit--eg. pArvatI, lalitA--are shortened in English as Parvati, Lalita. In Tamizh, lalitA is written correctly, but pArvatI is only PArvati; writing it as PArvatI would amount to Brahminism (it is a different issue that even Brahmins don't care about it).

Members might dig up other mistakes, so parents reading this thread could be better informed.