CUDDALORE: For a long time, people of Tamil Nadu have had a penchant for selecting unique names for their children. “My father Pulavar Ponnambalam named me Thani Tamil Kottran and one of my sisters Thani Tamil Nadu (Pure Tamil Nation). When we were young, many teachers questioned me and my sister over our names. But we strongly defended our father’s choice of names,” recalls the doctor .
For him, a follower of Maraimalai Adigal who spearheaded the Tamil Purist Movement in the early decades of the last century, naming children in pure Tamil was not restricted to his own children. As a teacher, he also had named many his students with such names.
From the same district is 50-year-old tailor named Jathi Ozhippu (Annihilation of Caste), a resident of Periyavalayam, whose father Kaliyaperumal was a staunch supporter of Periyar. “Some 25 years ago, a police sub-inspector asked my name. I replied. He asked me to repeat. He thought I was kidding. So he made me wait in the station for hours till my friends helped me to get out of custody,” he said.
For some, like Anbu Suresh, a retired government employee from Kammapuram near Vriddhachalam and son of former Nagapattinam MP Kathamuthu, the names of his three sons reflect his ideology. “I married a Muslim woman. We have named our first son Sahul Stalin as a mark of respect to Joseph Stalin, second son Viduthalaipuli Iqbal, out of admiration for Urdu poet Iqbal and the LTTE movement in Sri Lanka and the last son Saddam Hussein, who dared to oppose America,” he explained.