A friend talked about the thought he and his wife put into naming their kids. As I was driving back home, I wondered if I could identify myself with any other name. After all, I do have another name that was uttered only in formal Hindu ritualistic contexts--Venkataramasubramanian.
I imagined coming to the United States with that name. A passport with the full name of Krishnamurthy Venkataramasubramanian. I imagined waiting in line at the DMV and the clerk struggling to utter even one syllable from that polysyllabic name. I laughed hysterically while negotiating the curves on a dark night.
It doesn't take much to amuse me!
The curious brain then transitioned to what might be the longest single word name ever recorded. I hypothesized that there could be plenty of place names that will be way longer than Venkataramasubramanian. Given the German fascination for adding up words together, an additional hypothesis was that the longest single word name would be of a place somewhere in Germany.
You see what happens when one does not drink alcohol or take drugs and drowns in coffee instead?
In the centuries past, what did the equivalents of me do? Perhaps their curiosity simply drove them insane and they jumped off the nearest cliff?
I went to the oracle:
Imagine that: more than 34 million results in less than half-a-second!
We vastly under-rate and under-appreciate the phenomenal access to information that our contemporary world provides us. I am unable to understand the criticism that Google and other technologies are dumbing us humans down. As I noted before, Google has immensely simplified my life and Google has made me smarter, and not stupid, by any means. If at all, I am stupider when offline without Google! I remind students all the time that Google is their best friend.
Anyway, back to the 34 million results to my question and the hypothesis. Turns out that the place with the longest single word name is not in Germany after all. Not anywhere near it.
Wikipedia says that it is all the way down under in New Zealand. 85 letters in the English language!
So, what does the name mean?
Translation: "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one"What a lovely meaning that tells a story all by itself!
So, what might be the longest place name in the old country? Wikipedia answers that too: Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta
I cannot imagine these places with any other names now, as much as I can think of me only with the name I now go by. After all, no Romeo I am! ;)
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
2 comments:
Aha ; young man; prostrate before elders (me !) and say ______ gotraha, apastamba sutraha, Venkatasubramania sharmanamaham asmibo !!!!!!!!
Yes, it should now b mandatory for parents to give simply names that are pronounceable by alien tongues, given that we live in a globalised world. The Burmese lead the world in this - after all if your name is U (U Thant remember), you can't go wrong. The Chinese follow- Li is after all the most common name in the world.
I have mixed feelings about the naming though ... the loss of old cultures bothers me. But then here I am leading a life in which I have systematically shedded quite a bit of the old culture after carefully thinking through them. So, I know I have no grounds to tell somebody else that they ought to hold on to their cultures.
Maybe what I would prefer is that people think through and then make decisions, as opposed to simply following fads. But then that might be asking for too much, eh!
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