My name.

I was lj-ing casually and came across a post about peoples names (sorry, I don't remember the link and searching for it is too much work). Hence this post.

Quite a few people expressed shock, surprise, grief, angst, joy, whatever at the length of my name. Few of them were curious to ask me what my name meant. So "the thing" happens again when I join this place. And this is what I told a curious colleague of mine who figured out that I was called appaji by some:

> I heard your nickname at Hughes was just Appaji.

Yes, they do call me that. Variations of Appaji were used by a lot of people, the most popular one being Appa. But in the world where login ids matter more than names, I was also called JEENAG and BANGA. JEENAG because gnag was my id at (cur_org - 2), and BANGA (= BANgalore Giridhar Appaji) thanks to weird naming conventions at my (cur_org - 1).

I am also called Girdhar (with the second "i" missing), which I see as the revenge of the north indians, because apparently, the south indians call Kanwal with the "n" pronounced when it should have been subtly silent ;-)

When people ask me what my name is all about, this is what I tell them.

1. The Y stands for Yasa and is my surname. It seems my ancestors had a distinct accent of speaking and so we were given that surname. Yasa means accent in my native tongue.

2. Giridhar happens to be my first/given name, based on the date/time that I was born, blah blah blah ...

3. Appaji: There was this king by name Sree Krishna Deva Raya who ruled parts of south india and the deccan plateau. He had a rather wise prime minister who was respectfully referred to as Appaji (appa = father and ji = ji) by the king. Hence Appaji.

4. One lady in my ancestral family had "Naga" in her name and she was supposed to have super-natural powers. She was also worshiped in the villages, and hence Nag/Naga is stuck into peoples names whenever and wherever there is a chance to do so.

1 and 2 are true for sure. 4 is a lie (sue me), but I tell that because people are not usually ready to accept that I don't know the reason why I have it in my name. 3 is a lie too, but once in a while it makes me feel great about my name and gives me an ego boost; the reality however is that it is derived from my grandfathers name who was called Appa Rao (Now, let us not get into what that means).

What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet
- Juliet, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet