“First world yoga names” 🤣
Kinda hilarious trend in Bollywood celeb naming that’s now turned into a general premium mediocre baby naming trend in upper-middle-class India and diaspora
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Cf. This viral tweet. Since I don’t have kids and rarely meet kids (Indian or otherwise) I had no idea this was happening, though I vaguely noticed that easy “crossover” and made up Indianish names were getting more popular.
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My god I am walking past a desi birthday party and literally every boy name has a ‘aan’ sound in it. Avyaan. Viyaan. Vihaan. Aryamaan.
Guys what is going on? Which website is responsible for this? Can the government intervene? Maybe an ordinance? Some OCI restriction?
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Black people: either take over obsolete European names like Tyrone or make up names with apostrophes
East Asians: take a second Western name either from a TV show or relatively rare like Henry
Indians: invent bizarre vaguely Indian sounding code-switch-friendly names.
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The supply of true overlap names with distinct Indian and western senses is sharply limited and mostly female: Maya, Leela…
And most names are not easily anglicized. Siddharth can become Sid. I knew a Shanmuganathan who turned into a Nathan. But most names won’t adapt easily.
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If you have an ear for Indian languages you can pick out the made-up names easily. It’s the mix of too-easy pronounceability when spelled in English and a certain lack of auditory heft. A fragility that you know is not backed by long-term historical survival.
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An interesting reverse aspect is that many Christian communities in India have the reverse practice of a Hindu first name with Western-Christian middle and last names, or Christian first and Hindu last name.
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Typically:
Full Christian Portuguese name = usually Goan
Hindu first/Christian last = usu Kerala, old pre-colonial Christians… mix of Roman Catholic, Syrian etc.
Christian first/Indian last = relatively recent, likely converted through Jesuit outreach during British era.
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One reason I’m very interested in naming is that I find naming characters for fiction very hard. Since names *are* compressed historical baggage, you can’t just make up words. If you succeed you get a vaguely lightweight effect. If you fail, your sources get too transparent.
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If you’re writing realistic fiction it’s fine, since your character will have a realistic backstory and baggage from real history. But with science fiction, you either get weighed down by baggage that doesn’t fit the story OR names that lack heft. What you want is faked baggage.
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I notice 4 strategies:
1. Half-assery— Asimov’s names are just lazy western morphs: Harry — Hari, Daniel — Daneel, Doris — Dors.
2. Owning it — Dune. The Fremen are transparently middle-eastern
3. Incorporate into plot: Dark Materials
4. Nerd-out: LOTR
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The Dark Materials strategy is the most imaginative. Obvious gypsies are called gyptians, reflecting an (incorrect) in-world origin-theory tracing them to Egypt. This turns to be be a meaningful plot element via parallel universe shennanigans.
But this limits plots.
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Argentinian freemium names 🤣
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In Argentina back in the day one usually had to sue (pay) to have a foreign first name, ergo Edgardo. No such restriction now, so you too can have "Jhon" (I don't get it. Jhonatan, Braian, etc). twitter.com/vgr/status/141…
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Basically a real name is an entire set of built worlds. It strongly constrains almost ever other bit of cultural furniture you might use in a story. A set of character names = world is in the intersection of the individual name-worlds. If you pick randomly, this may end up null
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Hypothesis: naming is a narrative complete problem. A good naming strategy will finish more of the story than structural scaffoldings like Campbell’s hero’s journey. If you know all the proper nouns that appear in your story, you know your story.
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