Our home study is coming up Friday, which means that we are all the more closer to becoming parents. There is a good chance this may happen very quickly (i.e. we have to leave Italy early because we've gained custody sooner than expected) or may drag out for months. It's India, so no one really knows. Either way, we've been looking a lot at name choices for our kid(s).
Our kids will already have given names, and there is a chance we may keep them, but there is a greater chance they will share names with Hindu gods or goddesses or Mohammed. And, we'd rather not call our kids "Krishna" and "Mohammed" for the rest of their lives.
Name hunting is a little difficult when you're working with 2 cultures, 3 languages, and 2 very different pronunciations of English. Some examples:
For your delight, here is a sampling of real Indian names we will not be choosing, to prevent our child from being scarred forevermore:
Our kids will already have given names, and there is a chance we may keep them, but there is a greater chance they will share names with Hindu gods or goddesses or Mohammed. And, we'd rather not call our kids "Krishna" and "Mohammed" for the rest of their lives.
Name hunting is a little difficult when you're working with 2 cultures, 3 languages, and 2 very different pronunciations of English. Some examples:
- I like "Maali" or "Maalai." Liban says because they mean "gardener," that's not a good connotation as that's a less-than-respected profession here. A good comparison may be calling our child "Janitor." So that's not happening.
- Liban likes "Tarah," which is pretty and means "stars." It's pronounced "Tuh-raah," which sounds fine, but I told him all Americans are going to pronounce it like the English name "Tara," and he cringed and immediately vetoed it.
- Liban pronounces "v" as "w" about 50% of the time, and I cannot pronounce 6-10 Hindi/Tamil letters consistently. Therefore all names with those letters are out.
In between finding non-Mohammed's relatives' names and non-Hindu/Jain/Sikh god/goddess names, we also don't want names that every third person has--in either country. We are trying to avoid "random screening" at TSA security checkpoints with our selection, and Indian names like "Balasubramanium" are out because I want my child to learn to spell his/her name before 3rd grade. Add that Liban doesn't like "Bollywood filmy" sounding names or "white" names and I generally don't like traditional English or biblical names, and we have quite the adventure.
I think we have (finally) officially settled on 2 names, so let's see now if we actually get matched with kids of that gender. Hopefully, we will find out soon after our homestudy!
For your delight, here is a sampling of real Indian names we will not be choosing, to prevent our child from being scarred forevermore:
- Fakhraddin
- Dixit (Pronounced Dik-shit)
- Deepshit
- Harshit
- Mehboob
- Mahbooba
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