“What's in a name?” said the wise old William Shakespeare, “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell the same.” Well, this may be correct for the roses, not so for the men, I suppose, Mr. Billy the Bard!
For some reasons, Europeans will never name their kids as Hitler! Seriously, not going to happen. This has to be noted that Hitler was originally a Schicklgruber! Now you can’t imagine “Hail Schicklgruber” having the same hypnotic ring as “Hail Hitler” had. Hitler’s grandparents were Schicklgruber and only his father had changed it to Hitler. Adolf, who was never fond of his father, at least could owe him a gratitude for giving him an emphatic name. There is indeed a lot in the name.
If a person is called Osama or Bin Laden, then he can’t check in anywhere without raising apprehension about him. Forget name even an Osama look-a-like is feared like hell. A person with Castro surname can not roam easily on the streets of United States. Back in India, no parents were willing to name their kids as Pran, because there went a fierce Bollywood villain by the same name. A. R. Rahman was “Dileep Kumar” before he became A. R. Rahman and Dilip Kumar was “Yusuf Khan” before opting out for Dilip Kumar. In a film called “Shabnam" he played the character called Manoj and this inspired Harikrishna Giri Goswami to become Manoj Kumar. Apparently Harikrishna Giri Goswami not only adapted Dilip Kumar’s mannerism, he also took one of his names. There is indeed a lot in the name.
Mahatma was originally Mohandas Karamchand. Mother (Teresa) was originally Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Osho was originally Rajneesh Chandra Mohan. Swami was originally Narendranath Dutta. Pelé is in fact Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Rivaldo is Vitor Borba Ferreira. Ronaldinho is Ronaldo de Assis Moreira. You won’t recognize them if these people would pop up with their original names. O Henry was born under the name William Sydney Porter. Pablo Neruda was Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. He liked the ring of Pablo in Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and Neruda in Czech writer Jan Neruda and thus cooked up a name for himself. Robert Zimmerman liked the way Dylan Thomas’s name would sound and became Bob Dylan, a name definitely more impactful. There is indeed a lot in the name.
This is why there is this virtual outrage over the naming of a newborn kid as Taimur Ali Khan. Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor outrageously named their first child as Taimur Ali Khan and expectedly the hell broke loose. Twitter went berserk. Are you serious, that exclaimed in disbelief! Is the boy named after the fierce Turco-Mongol conqueror and the founder of the Timurid Empire Tamerlane, who had murdered millions? What makes them think that they should call their kid Taimur, a much hated and feared name in Central Asia and North Africa. In 1398, Timur had invaded India, attacking Delhi Sultanate. The battle took place on 17 December 1398 and Delhi was sacked and left in ruins. During the battle Timur had executed 100,000 captives, most of them innocent civilians. The capture of the Delhi Sultanate was one of Timur’s greatest victories, even greater than Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan.
“Precisely what kind of people name their children after nomadic invaders? Does anyone name children as Hitler in Poland?” Somebody screamed on the Twitter and this was not a lone voice. A lot of people are wishing the young couple on the birth of their first kid, but there is also a lot of distaste over the choice of the name, since Taimur is not just another name. It has a ring. It has a connotation. And there is indeed a lot in the name, no matter what the good old “Billy the Bard” had to say about it.