Naming kids is easy. What did Shah Rukh Khan name his latest child? What ingredient is the hottest thing in the MasterChef kitchen? Which great-great-grandmother’s memory needs to be honoured? Where did you take your last vacation? The answers to these questions can make great baby names. And if you don’t want to name your child Abhram, Ajwain, Apeethakuchalambal or Athens then you can always turn to numerology, astrology or geology to find the perfect name.
If you’ve chosen to name your child something rare and exotic in an attempt to stand out and help them make their mark in history, chances are people will raise their eyebrows a fraction, smile and say ‘Andalusia Napolean Ira? Such an interesting choice. What does it mean?’ Family members will titter on the newly created WhatsApp group that you are of course not a part of. (Don’t feel bad. When your cousin Chinu has a baby, he’ll get bumped off the group and you’ll get your turn to make snide comments about his baby Avalokiteshwara Mozart.)
But pets. Pets are an altogether different ball game. Family members whose suggestions were ignored when you had human children, come back to offer past suggestions. ‘How about Sanjay?’ ‘Lakshman is such a nice name. I had a handsome neighbour called Lakshman.’ They also feel that since your children have decidedly neutral — I-could-be-from-anywhere names, your dog’s name should have a more local flavour. My father suggested Kabali and Singaram.
Plus if you have kids already who can string together sentences and no longer poop in their pants they too feel they have naming rights.
I floated the ‘he/she that scoops the poop shall name the pooch.’ mantra but no one listened. Our boys wanted to name the dog after something they loved: ‘How about Choco Amma?’ ‘No! Let’s call him Fortnight’ ‘I know! I know! Google! Google knows everything. Then our dog will know everything.’
Child, if that’s the way the world worked, I would have named both of you Google and Bing. Ok, not really. Google and Google1.0 maybe.
Some things are common to human names and dog names though. One has to be careful that your dog doesn’t have too common a name. If you’re riding a trend, make sure you get on the hashtag quickly. Trust me, Inji is so last year and there’s a profusion of dogs, cats and iguanas with that name already.
Of course, no one cared about what I thought we should call the dog. So, as with the dog itself, I gracefully recognised that I was fighting a losing battle and told the rest of the family to pick a name. Which is how we ended up with a dog called Woody. Named so as he is brown, and we all love the cowboy Tom Hanks voiced in Toy Story. Awww, right?
This name has come with it’s own challenges.
‘You named your dog after Woody Allen?’ asked a colleague.
‘Eh! You know what woody is slang for no?’ nudge-nudged, wink-winked a friend on WhatsApp.
‘Hoodi-ya? Why ma you named after full traffic jam place?’ asked the neighbour’s cook.
We could have just called him dog.
Menaka Raman
@menakaraman
The writer’s philosophy is: if there’s no blood, don’t call me