A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and I suppose, by the same token, a cauliflower by any other name would still smell like, well, whatever it is a cauliflower smells like. Jokes apart, I think there's more to a name than that.
I don't know why but I could never like my own name. I somehow feel that names have a personality of their own, or at least we perceive one, and the way I see it, the name doesn't suit me at all. I feel more comfortable when addressed by the shorter form 'Syl' or even my nick name 'Preeti'; they are better definitions of me.
We sometimes form impressions of people without being aware of how. I feel that names play quite some part in conveying these impressions. Our contact with the owners of certain names influences our subsequent perception of those names or we have learned to identify the name with something. When we hear the name 'Sita', we imagine a virtuous woman , even if the Sita in this instance is anything but virtuous.
We can say with some assurance that a name can influence our impression of another, but does a name influence the owner himself?
I wonder if I might not have been a different person altogether if my name had been, say, 'Suhasini'.
There is one other interesting fact pertaining to this name business that has always intrigued me. I'm more than a little interested in astrology, though my knowledge is hardly accurate when it comes down to it. There is a system in Hindu astrology, I've heard, where the first letter of a person's name is used to determine the person's star sign (or something to that effect). In short, the name is considered as the key to a personality.
I'm not saying that there is anything at all in this, for the simple reason that I don't know, but I do consider it worth pondering that ancient texts seem to attach more than a passing importance to the role that one's 'name' has to play in one's life.
posted by Sylvia D'souza at 5:36 pm
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