BENGALURU: When city-based actor Veena Sunder attended her husband Sunder Raj’s (also an actor) film screening for Kirugoorina Gayyaligalu, she was in for a surprise. There was no Sunder Raj in the roll call. Instead, the name ‘Sunder Veena’ flashed on the screen. While her husband had informally dropped his official surname to adopt her name in 2006, this was the first time he was doing so in his professional space. “When we got married, he never wanted me to change my name but I went ahead anyway. So to see him use my name with his in the professional space made me feel incredibly proud,” recalls Veena.
Both Veena and Sunder were part of the same industry, where Veena became a well-known household name, thanks to being a part of various daily TV shows. Sunder reveals that another contemporary of his also went by the name of Sunder Raj, which was a cause of confusion. “Most people would refer to me as ‘Veena’s Sunder’ to make it clear who they were referring to. So, that’s when I decided to change my name to avoid any further mix-up,” says Sunder.
Earlier this year, Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh made quite the uproar when he said he had no qualms in taking up his wife Deepika Padukone’s surname. Closer home, like Sunder, other Bengaluru men have taken on their wife’s name to pay tribute to the women in their lives.
In 2012, Raj Sowmea (previously Venkata Varadarajan) returned to the city from the Middle East to start his own business. Since he was just starting out, his wife supported the family financially and was the one making most of their major decisions. “For those few months, she had taken charge completely and called the shots,” says Raj (46). The couple has two children and Raj wanted them to carry their mother’s name as well but felt it would be too late since their birth certificates were already registered. “In fact, when my friend became a father, his son’s name also carried his wife’s name. I felt like he completely stole my thought! But since it was too late for my children, I decided to do it my way and adopted her name with mine,” shares Raj.
Since making the change officially was a tedious process, both Sunder and Raj did the next best thing in their capacity: They took to social media to change their names. “As much as I’d like to change my name on my documents, it would be a time-consuming process. After changing my name on social media,I started using ‘Sunder Veena’ in all the title cards of my movies as well,” says Sunder.
Raj, too, agrees that his school marks cards, degree certificate and passport all carry different names and he didn’t want to add another layer to the name change process. “Besides, with social media, most people in my circle are already aware of my name preference,” he adds. Like Sunder, he too associated his wife’s name with his for his creative works. The entrepreneur has penned some short stories for Amazon Kindle, all of which carry the name ‘Raj Sowmea’.
While people have been largely accepting of the men’s decisions, the husbands do admit that initially, they were at the receiving end of comments such as ‘You’re such a hen-picked man’ from family members. “These were passing comments and never bothered me. Marriage changed me and my wife had a huge role to play in that. Those comments stopped too after some time,” says Raj.
The second gen
When K Anbunathan’s son was born two years ago, he knew this would be his chance to break away from the long-standing tradition of children carrying their father’s names as part of their identity. “As a father I was involved emotionally, but my wife obviously played a bigger role since she had a physical bond with our son. My wife was on the same page too so we decided to name our son Aarav Kriti Nathan,” says the 38-year-old advertising professional. Agrees Nishant Ratnakar, a 37-year-old independent photographer, who also added his wife’s name to his daughter’s name, who is now known as Ruhani Swapna Nishant. While neither of the two had an issue with getting the names registered, Ratnakar does feel that the lack of guidelines in what the law says could hinder people from taking such steps. “While no one had an issue with my wife or I choosing to add her name to our daughter’s name, I do know of someone who faced problems while he tried to include his mother’s name as the parental authority in his signature. More people might be willing to go against the norm if there were lesser such instances,” he says.