Amritsar Calling: What’s in a name

Amongst the Sikhs it is the Singh or the Kaur which substitutes the surname, a practice introduced by the Gurus to override the terribly demeaning caste system, whereby the surname, used to identify the class or the caste of the individual. Why have additives to a good name when you are a follower and a learner in subservience of the Supreme Being, and thus why not forsake all other forms of identification and embrace humility in your existence? But the reality is always shaded in tones, so our brethren in the villages, well, they tag themselves to their village. So, we have ‘post-fixes’ to their names that accrue from their ancestral village.

So, villages of our Amritsar district, Daleke & Ranike, Sialka & Sufian, Shahpur & Sherpur, 777 of them tag along with the names of sons and daughters in their quest for recognition wherever they go. This practice is not new and has sustained despite contrarian reforms. It provides a kind of affinity amongst people who have or have had family lands in a certain village. These connections are used to prove relationships beyond the immediate blood line and to curry favours and for nepotistic advantage. It is shocking that in this era of the global village it is your small village that defines you.

One of my Jatt Sikh friends gave me an entirely new perspective to the surname issue. Look at it this way he said, that a Rajwinder Singh may have ended up with a nickname of Raje and known as thus with an ‘informal’ name call, but a Rajwinder Singh Gill becomes a Gill Saab, and thus has an aura of perceived respectability regardless of deeds or misdemeanour. So, there could be a calculated manoeuvre in this naming process or just a fringe benefit. Our young politico Amrinder Singh Raja Warring now heads the Congress in the state. He carries along with his name his nickname and a kinda English version of his village name Wrding. Go figure, me lads!

The city folks have their own parlance. There are Bhatias, Aroras, Chadhas, Kandharis and more. Our Hindu friends have their own surnames, although there are commonalities due to shared bloodlines and Biradaris (narrower communities). Much as you would think the Biradari and caste system has ended, have a look on a weekend matrimonial column to see how much it means to people to keep within a clan. When my parents married, their betrothal was dubbed as a “zabardast,” astounding love marriage, since my educated father chose his bride from within the same religion but outside the Peshawaria fraternity. Goodness, a pathan of the Khyber lineage marrying a Lahoran, as if people from Lahore were mere commoners. Tobba Tobba. What is the world coming to?

Perhaps there is a safety in being clannish even to this day of an otherwise globe-trotting existence, or just a plain sense of belonging, going back to or having pride in one’s roots. Who knows? Sounds a bit Greek to one who has been happy being a Mr. Singh, and actually content in this perceived ‘anonymity.’ My first cousins on the other hand write their surname with pride, and so do the kids. To each his own, I guess.

In fact, people are experimenting with new name-ology, different and differentiated from the norm. Down with a terrible neckache I came across this delightful orthopaedic surgeon with a distinct name, uncharacteristic enough for the referring friend to spell it out to me and yet get the spelling wrong himself. An ex-army man (a nine-year SSC stint in the service of the nation), he had even trained at the Spinal Injury Centre in the capital and also spent eight years in a South Korea hospital. Veushj Sharma explained to me that in Sanskrit every name that ends with a ‘j’ signifies ‘derived from’. So, while a normal Viyush would have been sunrise, this Veushj, is the product of the sunrise. And what a product, an ace surgeon who can break the hunchbacked spine or other deformity of a sufferer and literally reconstruct it correctly. A new sunrise in the lives of others.

We shared jokes of our experiences about Punjabis, so very enamoured with an army life, that they would name their sons Jarnail Singh, Captaan Singh, Laftaen Singh, Karnail Singh, but surprisingly never a Brigadier Singh. There is many an army man who retired as a havaldaar but went by the name of Jarnail Singh. And of course, the confusing reality of a Lt. Colonel Major Singh is pretty intriguing as well. This one definitely had the whole battalion perplexed regarding his seniority, or the lack of it.

The other day we got a guy to substitute for our main cook. When I asked for his name, he said call me Ram. Well, I commented that it was a nice name to call him by but what was his real name? Turned out to be Dilip Kumar Yadav. Well Dilip it is for me then I said. He seemed perplexed as every household he had worked in had called him Ramu or Ram. Is it your nickname I probed further? When the answer was in the negative, I grew even more intrigued. He explained that in most Amritsari households the cooks are called Ram and their ooper wala munda, the second helper for sundry jobs, Chottu. Well, this was an odd revelation, but then, we are what we are.

An interesting affinity to name kids that rhyme with the parents’ names has been evident up to our generation. You could have a Ramesh Chander who would be son of a Suresh Chander and grandson of a Mahesh Chander. My driver Santa Singh was the son of – you guessed it right – Banta Singh of course, and his cousins were Mota and Tota Singh. His neighbours, the ruffians who made life hell by repeatedly encroaching upon Santa’s farmland were Lalli and Palli. And which kind of parent calls his child Black, Kala? Well, there are scores of them who are stuck for life with this rotten nickname. In fact, anglicising surnames as nicknames was extremely popular and considered hep in our time. Grewals became Gary, Randhawas preferred being called Randy, Sidhus felt hep when called out as Sid, and so on. They developed a kind of air about them in colleges that was distinct from the normal Prabhjits and Sandips. One old friend from teenage was called Dalbir Kaur. She shortened her name as soon as she landed in Australia. I in fact texted jokingly to her that I knew Dalbir became Debbie but when did she get ‘bent’? Debbie Bent was not quite amused.

Some kids just do not like their names, so they change them early on in life. One of the girls in my office goes by the name Prabhkirat but has some of her references mentioning her as Priya Tandon. Keep asking her but she never gives you a plausible answer. She just diverged for a while and came right back to the original, I guess. Another who interned with us is Parambir, but prefers to be known as Kudrat, which suits her aplenty since she is a mountaineer and a lover of hills and dales. One pretty little child I met at one of my talks at Khalsa College was actually called Nature Kaur. Well that said it all, did it not?

A few years ago, a dear friend suddenly got it into his head to change the names of his entire family. His kids were furious but eventually succumbed to the lure of numerological and astrological bonanzas in store for them if they made the change. His wife and mum obviously stood their ground, but the rest followed suit in getting garbled spellings that somehow matched the sound of their original names. To be honest, he has done pretty well for himself, so many are tempted to do likewise.

We had a fabric dealer in Imphal, a wonderful soul whose parents named him Sardar. So, he finally became known as Sardar Sardar Singh. We spent many a meal together enjoying the family’s warm hospitality. Names thus have an interesting way of playing themselves out. Am sure you have heard of the Prakash Kumar Chopra who was ragged silly as PK Cho-para and the PK Dubey who was the butt of jokes all his life.

Meanwhile the ‘Naamkarans,’ the naming ceremonies continue. Amongst the Sikhs when a child is born, the first visible alphabet upon opening the Holy Book, the Guru Granth Sahib, is the one with which the name shall begin. Some adopt one of the words from the Hukam, the text for the day from any page opened with reverence, as the name of the child. The rest of the faiths are usually at liberty to pick any they like, or sometimes they are given one by their family Baba, their saintly mentor. Nowadays there is a deep quest for the different, the unmatched and the new. I myself have had the unique opportunity of having one which no one else had for three-fourths of my life. Now I am required to share social media space with others who have fancied mine enough to name their progeny. So as a late participant to Instagram I lost my premiership and became @gunbir3.

Our city itself began with the name Guru Da Chakk, then Chak Ramdasspur, and later it became known as Ramdaspur. With time, keeping in view the nucleus of the pool of nectar around which it dwelt, it acquired the name of Amritsar. In a couple of my articles, I informally referred to the city’s dwellers as Ambarsari, a colloquial and informal reference. Some of our avid readers, well-meaning souls, took up cudgels with me. They felt that if people such as I go about putting this name in print, it could become the established norm. God forbid, I thought, the power of the pen and the game of the name can take serious dimensions, so I relent… mostly.

(The writer is an Amritsar-based philanthropist, environmentalist and author who loves all things Amritsari)