“What’s there in a name?” Shakespeare was all wrong this time. Every time name matters. You cannot just name someone like “What’s there in a name”. Imagine if Bappi Da’s name was Chhotu Ram instead of Bappi Da how hilarious it would be.
In India people make a great deal in deciding one’s name. There is a complete ceremony for accomplishing just this naming part. We Indians are expert in celebrating small things, making small things grand. Just for the sake of naming a child we invite our relatives – although we invite only a fraction of them, they still outnumber the total number of players that will be playing semifinals in FIFA 2014. And the amazing part is that more than half of them come just for the sake of free food.
Before this ceremony the family members make every brain cell of theirs work just to come out with a name that would be unique, meaningful and most importantly easily modifiable (yes they love to make nick names out the official name). Some families decide their child’s name even before the child is born (yes they get this crazy).
On the day of ceremony after offering prayers to the Gods, the pandit makes the –janam patrika (astrology chart) and the starting alphabet is decided as per the astrology chart. Now it is up to the parents whether they want their child to have a name prefixed with this alphabet or not. Well In my case my parents chose the latter one.
The competition of naming me was won by my elder brother – 3 year old back then. “I’ll call my brother Abhishek Singh”. These innocent words of my brother solved the big problem of naming me without upsetting anyone and marked the beginning of the big fight I’ll have with my name in the future.
People don’t actually realize what they have done until they face consequences and often the innocent gets the punishment. My name is beautiful and it possesses all the quality mentioned above but there is just one problem… It is too common!!! You can find a guy named Abhishek in almost every college, school, class or section. It is said no family is ever complete without having a kid named Abhishek.
Now people have a very strange way of teasing you with your name. Here are some of the ways in which I was teased in my childhood:
- Were your parent’s big fans of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan?
- Abhishek do you like Mango shakes?
- Abhishek! Huh. Your parents couldn’t find a more common name than this – only guys named Raj and girls named Pooja spared me on this.
- Some used to ask innocently,” Hey I’ve 3 cousins whose name is Abhishek! How many do you have?”
- In some classes I was recognized as Abhishek Singh-II.
- My classmates used to scream out loudly, “Abhishek is a mad boy”. And when I turned around to see who was messing with me, they had the perfect excuse ready- “It was not for you, it was for another one” and this was followed by giggling which made me helpless and annoyed.
- The best didn’t happen till I went to college. In the first week of college we didn’t knew each other by their names. But this guy comes up to me and says”Hey Abhishek! Did you follow any of the things in the previous lecture?” I was both amazed and happy as someone whom I didn’t know called me by my name, so I counter questioned him “How do you know my name?”. “Actually I don’t. Whenever I meet someone new I call him as Abhishek and 1 out of 3 times it works!” he replied confidently. As if my name is similar to the naked man technique #HIMYM
Now this verified statistical analysis of my name by him is enough to prove how common my name is.
Speaking of common names there is nothing very bad about this although you have to do something unique in front of people to make your presence felt. But I am lucky in this case as after 2 years, students in my college know me as the Abhishek- who spends more time travelling to the college than in the college! Sarcastic but true.
One more unique problem which I face is when I set up a new account on any website or any email account. On an average a person with normal name can set up a new account in hardly 10 minutes but not for me. In my case it takes around 7-8 hours and lot of discussion, suggestion, brain storming sessions with my friends accompanied by more jokes on the commonness of my name to set up an account whose name contains more information than any other email account – this is when I am lucky, in the worst case I simply cannot find a relevant user name or handle or email ID. One such website is TopCoder – to setup my account on it I spent a full day trying out various handles which were relevant to my name (I don’t want to be one of those who have usernames like coolGladiator or PrinceCharming) and wasn’t successful. Even to this date I don’t have an account on TopCoder!
But looking on the brighter side just because of my name I have many new experiences (mostly funny) to share with my friends. I laugh the most on these.
P.S. I love my name a lot in spite of being very common.
Abhishek Singh 
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