Whats in a Name?

"What's in a name? That which we call a Rose
by any other name would smell as sweet."

These are the lines from the Shakespeare play Romeo & Juliet. I guess it hold true decades ago. In today's world one's names matters a lot and can make a difference or give an edge.

I was one of those people who wanted to change their name because it sounded funny (at least when I was small) and no one else had such a name. I wanted to change my name when I was small. Often my name used to change as I moved up in my class. I was very strongly contemplating to change my name to put an end to all this. Somehow I did not do that. There was no new variation of my name in college. Thank God for that.

I thought I was the only one who had to go through this, just because my parents kept a name that no one else had. As I moved into college I knew I was not alone. There were others who had wackier names than me. One of my friends name was Blasco, one of our professor used to call him Blossom. 

As I moved in my work life, I find more interesting names popping up. Like the name Shalaka. The first time I heard the name I thought poor girl who had to live with such name which I thought was a name of a demon. I have one of my friend whose name is Mariadas. The better was yet to come, one of my colleagues in office was getting married. He told a name which I cant even pronounce and it sounded manly. Thank God after marriage the name got changed and a shorter name was adopted. All this made me feel better :) . After all I was not alone anymore. 

I even ended up doing a Google search for my name to see if I was the only one with such a name in the planet. To my surprise I had found three people with my name. It was good to see that people who shared my name were doing good in their life.

One might have heard how actor/actress names were changed as it was thought that the names were not cool enough. For e.g., Dilip Kumar, Mahima Chaudhary. Today its a fashion to have the letters of a name changed to change one's fortune. All thanks to Ekta Kapoor who started the trend by changing the name of her daily soaps by adding an extra "K" or starting a soap with the title starting with "K". After that every actor started to change their name by moving a letter of the name here and there. So now Vivek became Viviek and so on.

Shakespeare did not see this coming or else he would not have made such a comment. In today's world a lot depends on a name. As for me I have dropped the idea of changing my name. After all, I am not alone :)