thus wrote the great shakespeare! well, after my experiences, i tend to agree with him! rather, having seen how my name has been butchered over the years, i have been forced to agree! (unless you are from the movie/tv industry where it matters a lot to people!)
For reasons unknown, my parents decided to name me Urvish - a Sanskrit word meaning the King of Earth!! I guess their hope must be ki kisi din beta bada hoke bahut saari property ka maalik banega :-p
Anyways, this is more about how over years, people have failed to understand my name the first time I have told them (many take 2-3 attempts and some never get it!) and how they have come up with their own versions. When I was in school, thankfully my teachers got it right. But that is where my joy ended! I happened to be a bright student then, and coming first in class was the norm! So every year in my locality, they would give some prize to the dude who came first and when they would announce my name, it would be "Urvashi"!! The first time it happened, I let it go thinking it must have been a mistake! But it happened again the following year as well! And I got freaking mad...dude, the name is written in gujju for you, and you can't even read that?! and how come u get only my name wrong?! neways, next year another dude was a compere and he did the exact same thing!! i had finally learnt to read gujju and figured out the dudez must be mixing up the "e" matra on the "v" with the "sh"(try reading that in Hindi!!) ... personally, that is impossible to do! well the fallout was, i stopped going to collect the awards!
then came college and I started hearing new flavours - Urvesh being the most common! One could in fact count on finger tips how many people got my name right at the first attempt! I heard one of the best ones in engg - Gurvesh!! Me and my friend could not stop laughing! I could not understand how the person in question ever heard Urvish as Gurvesh!! Then came Purvesh, again not sure where the dude heard a P sound, and finally Urvanish!! Of course I had long stopped getting bothered by all this and the number of people who had got it right at the first attempt had still not touched double digits :-D
I thought in the US the trend would stop, but no siree, the same kept happening over and over! The Americans, because of their inherent inability to pronounce Indian names properly, would say it as Ervish! At work also, there was a dude who butchered it even though all he had to do was copy paste my name from an email!
As life moves on and I meet new people, I am sure I shall be hearing at least a few more interesting versions. :)
-uv
8 comments:
urvish, urvesh, gurvesh, purvesh, urvanish, ervish, uv, jhand.. whats in a name dude! saale suren, mere "handle" skills pe blog ?
"handle" dena jhand hone ka nishaani hai.. u know better :=)
uv.. keep posting.. jab tak tumhara kalam chalegaa tab tak mein padhta rahoonga!
hehehe...lekin fir bhi blog likhna chaiye...
btw uv, how come you dint mention aunty used to call you urvesh bcos apparently it sounded better than urvish...lol
was that the only reason she called u urvesh ?? btw, did rajni pillai know u by any other name ? ;)
frankly, i didnt know why she called me urvesh :-p
and of course, bloggin is a must :-D
eyuurvish - the south indian (tamil/telugu) way of calling ur name.
For eg. Evelyn Ave. in Sunnyvale CA becomes yeavlin.
thankfully none of my tamil/telugu friends have called me that way so far :-p
my name is urvesh meshram and it is easy to pronounce.....haha
well urvesh, what can i say, but lucky u :)
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