What's in a name?

Shakespeare has once said,” What’s in a name? “. But with all due respect, I will beg to differ on this. Since birth some phonetic sounds called name are attached with the person, it becomes his identity for the rest of his life. However common, however weird, however difficult to spell it may be, but everyone loves it!!

When I was born, my mom gave a list of names to my father and asked him to select one. My dad gave it a glance and said, “Third from the top”!!! I tried to register my vote and cried a lot, but nobody could understand which one chose! So, now I had a name. I had 2 other names also. ’Suchitra’ as suggested by my grandfather. He suggested this name because all my aunt's names start with ‘Su’ (Sushama-Suvarna-Sujata) and my mother’s name was ‘Chitrarekha’ before she got married. Another ‘Maitreyee’ as given by my youngest aunt. Oh come on, I had 2 better options. But my birth certificate laughed at me and displayed the name –‘Dhanashree’!!

Frankly speaking, as a child I never liked it. I felt that people didn’t even hear of this before. So when I used to play with my grandma, I would daily change my name and insist that she called me with that new name. But an opportunity was on my way to change my own name. In 3rd standard, I realized that I have to change school after 4th and register again in high-school. I decided to change my name that time, and till then I had a lot of time to search new one !( which never happened actually, because I forgot this thing in the enthusiasm to join highschool :P). Another one came when I got married, but till then my name was an instant hit in ‘Indore’ .everybody liked it very much since it was new name for them and nobody from my family allowed me to even think of changing it!!!

Even though my name wasn’t changed, it has too many derivatives. There are very few people who call me with my full name ‘Dhanashree’. When I was in 2nd class, my class teacher (Patwardhan mam )called me ‘Dhantya’! My school friends call me ‘Dhanu /Dhani/Dhane’!! When I came to Pune, it was a different story. My college friends call me ‘Dhana’( one fine day sonali called me ‘Dhanukali’ :P). And then, there was Punit who introduced to his friends as ‘Dhan’!!! If you are wondering if there could be any form which is shorter than this then let me tell you, one of my cousin aunt calls me ‘Dha’!

But in 24 years I have changed a lot. And I didn’t even realised when I started loving my name so much. It’s different. It’s unusual. It really makes me proud when I see my certificates, when I see it written on the board in my school. It makes me very happy whenever a chat window pops up and I find my name written in it. People don’t spell it correctly , people don’t know how to pronounce it correctly. But still, I love my name and that is who I am!!!

PS: one of my friends reminded me of the worst form of my name- Dhanno!!!!*(^*)(&%*