From: mgundeko@pcserver2.Naitc.Com (Murthy Gundekota)
Subject: Namely Dysfunction
Organization: Somewhere near Chicago
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 18:55:03 GMT

My rn lost track of an article where the poster gives several
instances of Indian names chosen by the parents to extract common
American nicknames. Honestly, folks this thing sucks! Indeed when I
find a Murugarajan calling himself Mike or Bhadranjaneyulu treating
himself with Bill, I can see the clash of Titans, resulting in the
tossing of visceral extracts. I call the disease of not able to name
themselves or others properly: ``Namely Dysfunction.'' The dysfunction
is manifest among those who can't think beyond cliches--namely common
nicknames such as: Bill, Mike, Mary, Anne, Pat, Dave, etc. To claim
the lack of dysfunction is to prove that they are creative. Hmmm...let
me demonstrate that I don't have a dysfunction. So let me deliberately
pick a complex name: Andapindabrahmandam (it means in Sanskrit: the
universe as a whole encompassing everything from seed to semen). A
dysfunctional brain comes up with Andy for males and An(ne) for
females, almost instantaneously. Of course, if you were
flustered with that name, so much power to your dysfunction. 

You can throw everything out of the window and call Mr/Ms.
Andapindabrahmandam, `friend,' `pal,' `dude,' `yo,' `chum,' `buster,'
or anything one level of abstraction above a nick name. The downside
is, if you didn't know how to pronounce `Dahmer,' and you don't eat
Wisconsin cheese often, mixed with road-side snow into a Wisconsin
cheese slurpy, and called him `chum,' then you end up swearing in
front of the judge to testify that you didn't get a heart transplant
recently by jumping the long waiting queue of heart patients even if
the forensic specialists couldn't complete the puzzle of a piece-wise
complete body without a heart. No, sorry, that's not your fault and
you don't have a clue.  You can solve this problem by calling Dahmer,
Dachsund, Dasher, Damner, Dinner, Drummer, Dumber, Dimmer, etc.
Thankfully, his parents solved this problem for us as Jeff. Now all
the Jeff's cover your face, close your eyes, and run with your limbs,
so long you have all these body parts or alternatively, if you are a
cheesehead. 

Unfortunately, a lot of these dysfunctional parents don't understand
the significance of having a unique nickname. I know this popular guy
whom everybody called `Betal.' It goes like-`Bay-Tall.' Now that's a
surfy far reaching name. It's unique and most importantly can be
compressed into `two syllables.' Remember, the charm in any nicknames
is the two syllables. The closer they match with `Do-Re-Mi....' or in
Indian music `Sa-Ri-Ga-Ma...' the better. I know there are 7 such
sounds in Indian classical music, so by juxtaposing two at a time, you
can produce 7P2 = 42 musical-sounding two-syllable names. That's not
much, is it? The baby boomers fill up not only the land with diapers,
they occupy the sound waves too. Anyway, you have to fight for your
share of band-width in the air waves. 

To resolve the limbo of Mr(s).Andapindabrahmandam about whom we
know nothing of, we can't give a nick name that is an abstraction
of his(her) impression on others. For instance, a Yo-Yo I know has a
gait that goes back and forth (should've been called a Pendulum). In
his case the nickname has nothing to do with his original name. Guess
why the girl was nicknamed as Six? Your guess is wrong! 

To solve the naming problem, we will assume our client,
Mr(s).Andapindabrahmandam, is something and then come up with a
nickname. Suppose our client is a computer programmer, then a suitable
nickname is Ada. The following table is constructed with such
associations:


Big, extra large, body				Dam
Big protruding boobs				Bra
A pain in the neck				Pin
A novice in everything				Dab
Wearing one bra always				Abra
Works as a middle man				And
Works as a care-taker				Inda (pronounced
						In-Die)
Imitates everyone				Apin


Not bad! We have now some original nicknames like Inda, Abra, and
Apin. All nicknames are extracted by a simple rule-of-thumb: should be
part of the original long name and must have two syllables. 

After this little exercise you should be able to conclude that the
longer the name and the more Indian the name is, the better your
chances of extracting a unique nickname. If you haven't come to this
conclusion by now in your life, as an Indian parent or independent
child of Indian parents, then you are dysfunctional by definition. But
not to worry, you will soon be all right, because you have read my
article so far.

:-)


Murthy







Newsgroups: alt.culture.us.asian-indian