Thread by @shrikanth_krish

One of the great unheralded developments (for better or worse) in Indian life over the past 50-100 years has been the sea change in the way Indians are named - especially in Urban India.

The change is very marked in both the North and the South.

The first major development is the "secularization" of names. This is particularly true for North India, and increasingly true in Southern India too.

While names tended to have a theological basis even 50-75 yrs ago, they are now getting more secular by the day.

Take for instance the urban classes of the North Indian plain.

The names that abound today are these -

Amit, Neha, Ajay, Vijay, Vikas, Ankush, Ankit, Adarsh, Anshu, Anshul, Viraat, Nikhil, Neeraj, Priya, Preeti, Pankaj...

In fact there is a joke among Southerners, that the archetypal North Indian male name is Amit and female name is Neha.

Sure, these are all Sanskritic Tatsama words. But they are not theological as they once used to be.

To get a sense of how the names looked in say United Provinces in early 1900s, let's look at the first names of all members of the Constituent Assembly from UP -

Ajit Prasad, Balkrishna, Banshi Dhar, Bhagwan, Damodar Swarup, Dayal Das, Govind Ballabh, Jwala Prasad, Padmapat, Purushottam Das, Hira Vallabha, Jawaharlal, Harihar Nath, Krishna Chandra, Mahavir (tyagi)...

None of these names are common anymore.

They have turned passe in barely a couple of generations

The other major change is that while names have turned "secular" to a great extent, they have also sanskritized to an equally large extent.

Prakrit names are increasingly passe in Northern India. At least in Urban areas.

So names like Banarasi Das, Popat lal, Mungeri Lal, Kishanchand, Siyaram, Bansi Lal - have very nearly turned extinct.

Maybe the names are still used in smaller towns and villages. But in the large towns, it is safe to say they are extinct.

Now in Southern India, the degree of secularization is less. But it is very much underway.

Also like the North, sanskritization of names has happened apace.

Tamil names for instance were fairly common even among brahmins some 100 years ago. But very very hard to find today, even among other castes.

Names like Magizhmaran, Umberkoman, AravAmudhan - prevalent among Sri-Vaishnava brahmins some 100 yrs ago. Very rare today.

So it's interesting that while Sanskrit knowledge and learning has declined in the society at large, when it comes to names, they have turned more Sanskritic!

Both in the North and the South

While these developments may seem trivial to some, I think they are worth reflecting over.

Why do we not dig into scriptures any more for names? To my mind this cannot be delinked from the larger process of secularization in society and the reduced role of religion in our lives.

But the sanskritization of names, is an equally interesting trend.

It is not necessarily something I embrace, as it smacks of pretence. The rootedness that emanated from a name like aravAmudhan or Kanhaiyalal is missing in chic Tatsama names like Ankush or Vikalp

This is in very very sharp contrast to the West where names have barely changed!

The first names remain v much Christian with a strong theological basis, with the odd Greco Roman exception (like say Horace, or Alexander)

Let's look at the first names of the American founders from late 18th century -

John (Adams), Alexander (Hamilton), George (Washington), Benjamin (Franklin), Thomas (Jefferson).

All these first names remain EXTREMELY common to this day

So in sharp contrast to India, where first names barely resemble the first names of our grandfathers, in the West, there has been remarkable cultural continuity in this regard.

Worth pondering over