What’s in a name?

Everybody has got a name and so am I. As a young boy, I never wondered as to why my name is so tongues twisting for the only reason that I never encountered people who really struggle pronounce it correctly, or at least approximately correct.

I never wondered or worried when my teachers or friends in school used to murder my name and spell it like the way they want. Being lazy, I never bothered to explain them how to pronounce and I used to satisfy myself it is one another cession of my name.

That was my first class of engineering studies. It was mathematics class. The lecture hall was filled with heterogeneous crowd from all over the country. Every one was busy in making friendships. The professor, who had a old devanand look arrived with a big book in his hand. We all rose to greet him ‘Good Morning. Sir’. He greeted in return with his smile and asked all of us to sit down. As it was our first class, he asked all of us to introduce ourselves to the class.

I heard some names, cool, cooler and frigid (hard to pronounce).

Anil, Rajesh, Amit ( I heard about 6 of them with this name)
And suddenly…
Anamika (Professor guffawed and said ... so you are Anonymous! There were chuckles all over).

Now I seriously wondered for the first time ever, even the nameless (anamika) is a name and it is easily pronounceable.

Then came my turn. I said ‘Dhaunjaya’ in my normal low voice.
He asked curiously ‘What is it?’ I said again ‘Dhanunjaya’.
He asked me again ‘Sorry I didn’t get you’. I repeated ‘Dhanunjaya, Sir’. The whole class was staring at me (this happens always when a student is asked again and again by the professor. be it be a name or a problem).

For a moment, I was thinking why my father did not think of a simple name, but instead, gave me such a difficult name just because it was the name of my great grand father and my grand father insisted him on it!

And then I realised what is in a name! People say you can know how much other person care about you by the way they pronounce your name.. Hmm.. not in my case .. I should not blame others for my name being so long!!

Once, one my Tamil senior was calling me and as I knew that he will rag me, I pretended as if I didn’t hear him.

He came across me my way and shouted, ‘Eyy..ciranjevi!.. Didn’t you hear me calling?’

I said ‘No sir, I heard you calling, but didn’t think it’s my name!! ‘(He was calling something like Danujjoy, which I can understand only if I were drunk)

He said, ‘Ohh…!!Then I will call you DJ from now on, and you.. .’ pointing at three of my friends with me, he said ‘You will also do so.. Understand’. We said ‘Yes. Sir’ and moved on.

That’s how my name transformation took place. People found it easy to pronounce and write without asking me for spelling.


Everyone thinks it as my short name, but for me I feel it as my actual name! But I observed one thing, most of the times, people are called with short names just because the actual name would be tough to pronounce.. Here are some of them…

Venkateswarlu ( a very common name in AP ,called as Venky or babu)
Satyanarayana ( satti)
Chandrasekhar (chandu)
subbalakshmi(subbu)
GokulaKrishnan( Gokri)
Ramakrishnan(Ramki)
Shanuallah(Shan)


It was cool and calm, of course effortless being called DJ, though people mistake it for a Disk Jockey, the struggle started again when I joined an MNC and luckily into a project.

Please wait for the struggle to be explained in the next post….

-Dhanunjaya (DJ)