What’s Not in A Name?

How do you like the name Schiklgruber?

You may not care to have an opinon on that but the person named as that did not like it one bit and changed his name and perhaps thereby changed quite a significant part of human history, dubiously.

What if you are named such that the name itself comes to characterize you? Not for nothing do people in many parts of the world ask for the meaning of a name. It is one thing to quote Shakespeare on naming a rose and quite another to be mis-named and live with the tag for life.

These days people name their children because the name rhymes well, has a nice ring to it, but is devoid of any meaning. Legends and history are both replete with instances of a person bearing out the characteristics of the name given to him or her at birth.

At a social meeting sometime back I came across a familiar gentleman who recognized me as an afterthought- amusing but pardonable since he had just crossed 70, from what he said later. We got talking and he mentioned his children, two of them. I could remember the elder one as that was the child I had mentored, along with a few others. I recollected that it was difficult to get this person out of reticence and shyness, no matter how much reassurance was provided. All that happened a long time back and without mentioning the mentoring I inquired about that child of this man.

“Oh, that one is now a teacher, not yet confirmed on the school’s payroll, but then has a job all the same.” the gentleman who had sired “that one” smiled.

“You know doc, we had nicknamed that one as Zero in childhood” he volunteered.

“Why did you do that, Sir?” I asked.

“Oh, you know how it is siring children, it is a gamble; you may get a son, you may get a daughter; sometimes your gamble fails. At the time of that one, it failed, so we decided upon this nickname.” He said non-chalantly.

“How about your second child?” I asked him, meaning to find out the whereabouts.

“We nicknamed that one Null” he was unfazed though he saw the dismay on my face.

“Why such a nickname?” I asked. He was now on my nerves.

“The gamble failed again…ha ha ha” He was remorseless. I wriggled away as soon I could.

“Null” is now in the middle of nowhere somewhere in an alien country, serving customers at a low paid job far below the potential she was endowed with at birth.

Schiklgruber obviously rebelled against the name given to him at birth and changed it to Adolf Hitler.

Would he have turned out differently with a name like, Kristen, perhaps?

The nicknames referred to  were given in the mother tongue of the children concerned, and this rendition is the nearest English equivalent.