My Name

This is one subject that many would have spent time in researching.
Everyone is interested to know what their name means…probably because they didn’t choose it!!

My saga of understanding my name started when I was in class 8. All those days I never went beyond my mothers description – “Nandhakumar is the name of Lord Krishna“. It was my Tamil aiyyah who started it up. He was asking everyone what their name means.



Guys like Suresh, Sanjay couldn’t think more than it is ‘their name’.
When my turn came I said as boldly as ever “It is the name of Lord Krishna”

“So what does that mean?”

I had never encountered such a question before, “It means, it is name of Krishna”
The class erupted into laughter. How could some one justify likes of Suresh and Sanjay laugh?

“But even it should have a meaning, don’t you think so?” aiyyah asked once the class settled

“But … aiyyah, no one asked Lord Krishna about his name”. This time aiyyah himself started the laughter.

“No, every name is a noun. And broadly, noun can be of two types, one is when you have a reason for it…a root noun sort of. Second is you don’t have a reason for it…it is called so because it has been associated with that sound, phonetic either accidentally, or deliberately”. That’s what aiyyah is….his classes never bore. He starts with some thing funny and ends up with the lesson he wanted to cover for that day.

“Probably mine is of the second type aiyyah” I said with the satisfaction of cornering him with his own words.

“No. There is a meaning in your case, probably more than one meaning”

With that he ended his class, leaving me ponder over “what could my name mean”. That day I did ask my mother…and she came up with the usual answer – “It is the name of Lord Krishna” and punctuated it with her semi-closed eyes, trying to bring the deity of lord Krishna in her imagination, uttering “Hare Rama, Hare krishna!”

I tried to explain my mother what aiyyah taught, but she found the sambar boiling to be more interesting than tamil grammar.

I had only one source of help. The next day I found myself standing before aiyyah's staffroom desk.

"So you want to know what your name means. Nandha has a root which means something like eternal, unstoppable, and can’t-be-put-off. Kumar means son. So if you put these together you get…"

“Eternal son”, I interrupted before he finished

Well it can also mean “Son of The Eternal, if you consider the possibility of grammar rule which allows one to ignore the apostrophe in usage. I mean it can also mean ‘Nandha’s kumar’ i.e. Eternals’ son”

Oh aiyyah please, but I just told, Thank you aiyyah” and left.

My God, what a name I have got.

That night I tried to explain my mother and got a “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna” as a reply.