What’s in a name?

A few months ago, one of my cousins announced the tentative arrival of the newest family member yet. This was followed by a flurry of activities amongst the senior citizens of the family, who dedicated the subsequent weeks in pursuit of the most important task a family faces in such circumstances: Finding a suitable name for the baby. A "gole maiz" conference was, thus, convened at my grandfather’s residence. The men of the family excused themselves to attend to more important things in life. This was right around the time Pakistan India were involved in a one-day cricket tournament.

Now, anyone who has witnessed such conferences will tell you that the proceedings are fraught with danger. People’s egos assume massive proportions and every naani daadi considers it her birthright to name the grand child. Some of the suggestions can be, well, shocking to say the least. For example, a phupee of the cousin wanted to name the girl after Huzoor’s ’ooNtnee’ (female camel) ’Quswaa’. Most of us laughed at this ridiculous suggestion because we already knew that daadi jaan had had an istakhaaraa-induced dream that the newborn was a fair-complexioned boy with light brown hair. As a result, the possibility of having a girl was struck out permanently. Since, phupee jaan did not know the names of any male goats or sheep owned by Huzoor, she left the house in a huff swearing that she’d never see the faces of her relatives till the day she died. Needless to say, she has died many deaths since then.

Many other names were suggested, but were rejected for various reasons. Osama, Zubaid, Hani, Adnan, Abdullah and Omer were already taken by popular terrorist figures. Zain, Shaheer and Qasim were well-known suicide bombers and the prospective parents did not want the scrutiny of airport authorities around the world. Ibraheem was rejected because the name was longer than the baby himself. The FBI list of international terrorists was consulted to make sure that any relevant names were excluded. (The way this list is growing, I am certain that it will soon be impossible to give any Arab-sounding names to newborns.) Unable to reach an amicable compromise, the conference was postponed until further notice.

That night, as I sat on my three-legged stool, I began to contemplate about the historical importance of names and their imperial and etymological consequences (I wanted to add the word Orientalism here as well for added effect, but I did not want to incur the wrath of certain chowkies for being irreverent toward some important figures.) After several hours of meditation, I realized that if it were not for certain names, our world would have been a very different place. Take the name Henry Heimlich for instance. Had his parents not named him Heimlich, people would have been choking to death in restaurants left and right. An otherwise entertaining activity such as dining out would have become a specter of death. Imagine walking into a restaurant knowing that you may never come out alive. But, thank to his parents, we can all enjoy a T-bone steak without the fear of PETA. However, some names could have been avoided altogether to make our existence on this earth a more pleasant experience. If Newton were named Ghulam, he would have never bothered to discover those dreadful laws of motion. The poor student could have said, "Allah knows best" and spent his time in pursuit of more fruitful activities instead of memorizing those godforsaken laws.

Fascinated by the topic, I decided to dig deeper in the history of the origins of the tradition of nomenclature. Here are the findings:

When the population of Earth reached 7, it was no longer possible to just look at someone in order to communicate. That’s when the name “Abay!” was invented. According to the laws of statistics, there was a higher than 50% probability of getting the desired person when “Abay Oh!” was uttered. However, as the population experienced exponential growth, the odds of finding the required person decreased substantially and it got to the point where it would take weeks to find him or her. That was when someone had the bright idea of associating physical attributes with names. Soon, names like “the-one-with-a-black-mole-on-the-right-buttock” became commonplace. Unfortunately, this convention of naming was also rendered obsolete when my ancestors invented the kurtaa pajama.

Further research also showed that many of my forefathers in pre-Islamic Delhi chose to remain nameless until the arrival of Mohammed Bin Qasim. Those were brutal times and all forms of communication were carried out via swords and axes. But, even in the dark age (central Asians had not arrived yet), they had the prudence to realize that they were not the same nation as hindus, so they rightfully refused to adopt their names. Since, Islam had not graced the planet at the time, they were a little confused about their identity. Many family members still suffer from such confusion. They claim that Mohammed bin Qasim never set foot in Delhi. To refute this baseless allegation, one need only look at my cousins who have definite Arab features. Rumor has it that Qasim made several short trips to Delhi in the wee hours of the morning when the rest of the city slept (except for maybe some female relatives.)

Anyways, the moral of this story is that naming a child is not as straightforward as trivial decisions of national importance such as naming the national bird, flower, color, etc. Those were simplistic times, when foreign policy amounted to naming a foreign minister and that was the end of the story. Now, finding a suitable Muslim name is nothing short of finding the proverbial “joo-e-sheer.”