Naming a Baby, the Corporate Way

When I learnt that I was expecting, one of the first few things I thought about was the name of my baby. I remember me and my husband had a detailed and focused conversation on the name. In true blue corporate style, we agreed on a few guidelines and wrote them down. We even emailed them to seal the pact! So, our guideline were:

1. The name must start with A. Yes, we are those parents who wanted the child to be roll number 2,3 or 4. Why 2,3 or 4? Why not 1? Well, read on the next point.
2. The name must not start with Aa. Avoid roll number 1 at all costs. You don’t want the child first in line for Viva and go there all blind! I kid you not. We actually discussed this and unanimously agreed.
3. It must be an unusual name. With no offence to the names themselves, all 80s kids have seen first-hand the curse of the Nehas and the Poojas. There were always more than one in every class. Is it any wonder then that as soon as our generation started having babies, uncommon and unheard names became the norm? We decided to jump on that bandwagon too. So yes, it had to be an uncommon name.

That was it. Just three rules.

They were the easy part. What came next was a whole bunch of research. I went all out and created excel sheets. Sheets, in plural. I created two distinct sheets – one for boys and the other for girls. Each sheet had a long list of names complete with the origin, the meaning and the internet site we found the name on. The authenticity of the site’s research was checked too. I read a whole bunch of names to find out if the people who published the names knew what they were doing. Turns out, lots of them did.

We had more than 25 names for each gender. Then began the slow, painful and often argumentative process of elimination. How each of the short-listed names sounded, how they could be shortened into nicknames, how difficult were they to pronounce, what did they mean and all such nuances were debated endlessly. Slowly, over two trimesters, we brought the list down to 4. Two names each for a baby girl and a baby boy. In the end, we closed our eyes and said all the names aloud. We picked the ones that sounded right. 

A few weeks later, our baby girl was in our arms and we couldn’t wait to announce – Aryahi has arrived to take over our world.

Well, we did break Rule #2 with Aadya, our second born… and maybe Rule #3 too. But Shh… don’t tell her that!