A Name , An effect
By Vengrai Parthasarathy
There is a romance attached to names, names like Juliet, Cleopatra and Helen They demand attention and conjure up visions of their romantic escapades.There are of course names like Heidi (the madam), and Monica Lewinsky the errant intern of Clinton fame, which straight away put you off. though some have romance as them.
Names that are often remembered have a tale hanging from them. Humour lends its hand too. , In fact,, the history of names is leavened with humour. A list sent by a correspondent to an American publication , said to have been picked up from a telephonedirectory.had nameslike Doris Clost, Rhoda Byke, Isabella Ringling, Dan Druff !
The veteran comedia Bob Hope’s name has been punned so many times but the one that takes the cake is a publicity blurb for the movie ‘Where there is Life’. It said Where there is life,
there is hope, Bob Hope. One Mr. Rangaraj was celebrating his fiftieth birthday and a friend sent
him a one word message: ’Rangarajulations’. I have heard of one Miss George who appeared in a
beauty contest. She was referred to as ‘Miss Georgeous’ by an imaginative reporter..
In America one finds some quaint names. Girls being called ‘India’, for instance, is not uncommon.
There was this family in Ohio whose surname was Christmas. It happened that the son brought home
a girl whom he planned to marry. Her name was, believe it or not, Merry.. No wonder they had Merry Christmas throughout the year. A dog owner a named his pet Stud. Is it any wonder that this pekingese fathered litter after litter,during his life time.
A gent whose name was Victor Emmanuel ( in India) got married and a friend sent him a book titled “In Marriage there Are no Losers” and inscribed it to Victor and the Vanquished. In another case a typographical error resulted in the name of Dorothy Lambour, the Hollywood actress of Bob Hope’s movies, being spelt without the letter ’b’. The Publicity Chief went ga-ga over this, as Lamour had the flavour of both glamour and amour. The name stuck.
What’s in a name? queried Shakespeare in his ‘Romeo and Julie’ and he went on to say “That which we call Rose, By any other name will smell as sweet”. But we know that to the Bard of Avon, to conjure a name was to evoke a spirit –witness the plethora of names he had given to his characters in his famous plays.
Mr. Vaikunt was an airline employee and a new acquaintance kept referring to him
as Mr. Kailash , presumably by association of ideas, both names meaning paradise..
This mistake occurred once too often to the irritation of Mr.Vaikunt. On one occasion Mr.Vaikunt who was on the telephone angrily told his errant friend” Mr.Kailash has gone to vaikunt. Try him there”. And, he banged the telephone ( it was not a cell phone which does not lend itself to this ‘subtle’ way of expressing anger).
The subject of names I not without its Churchilliana. Here’s one ( perhaps apocryphal)
One Mr. Bostom had joined the British P.M’s office and when Churchill heard this
man’s name , he is reported to have remarked:’ What a queer moniker! Its neither this nor that’. .Only a Churchill could have come up with such an off-the-cuff remark.
Dear Reader, it needs some figuring out. Got it? (BOSOM OR BOTTOM!