The Artless Art of “Calling” Names

“Heyyyyyy Narrasshhhh”, screamed a raspy voice from the other end of the telephone line. I bought time with a long, drawn out “yeeeaasss?”, as I attempted to rapidly process and identify the owner of this loud but not too familiar voice. Mr. Raspy-Voice at the other end did not wait for recognition; he continued “Narraaash, this is Greg calling from the Deputy Sheriff’s Association of California. Thanks brother for helping fellow brothers out last year. Can I put you down for $20 this year as well?” “Aaah”, I said to myself “this guy is selling me charitable contributions …. no ….. not this time dude”. “Ahem, ahem..Greg”, I said, with barely a hint of familiarity. “I would have loved to help out dude, but this year isn’t good…We've had some.....blah blah....”, I explained with some arcane reason for not plonking another $20 down a worthless cause, and quickly put the phone down.

I paused for a moment and then thought. Narrraashh! Nushley! Nah-ley-aah! Norris! Gosh, how many times and how many different ways would people mangle my name? Why can’t people get my name?

An avid sports & music buff, my dad had named me Naresh as a tribute to the then-famous Indian tennis player Naresh Kumar (and my older sibling Ravi Shankar was named so to honor the sitar maestro). My dad had thoughtfully peppered my name with vowels to make pronouncing it a breeze. But dad had only factored for Bongs and North Indians to have to deal with my name; even in his wildest imagination, he would not have expected that, three decades after his second born was named, that name would be on the tongues of Serbs and Kosovans, Chinese, Malays and Indonesians, Australians, Irish, Spaniards, and Germans, Egyptians, Iranians, and Lebanese, and by people from dozens of other nations.

Within days of my landing in Singapore one summer day in ‘91, a commodity trader, by the name Ng Chee Song, tried to coax me into joining a metals trading exchange. He had not bargained for a very very tough start to our first meeting; his broad smile lasted only as long as his firm handshake did. His misfortune began the minute he got hold of my business card.; he stared into my card every few seconds hoping for some divine intervention. After several failed attempts, and equal number of furtive glances at my card, he cleared his throat and began yet another attempt at getting my first name right “Na…na..na..sha ….. Nah..sha ……. Na…ley….” trying every permutation and combination of the syllables that made up my name. And then he nailed it…. or so he thought. He took a deep breath, wore a victorious smile, and said emphatically “NA-SH-LEY”, completely certain that he had got it right to the T. Convinced that he had gone past the first significant hurdle, he decided on some small talk regarding names, with an aim to warm up the atmosphere that had frozen still for several minutes as he was working on my name. “Alamak!”, he exclaimed. “Your name one …aaah, vely vely diff-curt one …aaah. Why you Indian people so diff-curt name one…aaah?” he enquired, with a pretty preposterous look. Of course, he neither had much interest in my response, not cared much for diction or grammar, as he continued his victory speech “See lah. My Chinese name one …aaah….. simper one, lah. So easy one aaah, even aaah, you Indian people asso can say onny. Vey-lee vey-lee simple one righ?” Basically, he implied that “we Chinese” have dumbed down our names to make even “you Indians” pronounce it easily. So I asked him how his name was to be pronounced.

“Vely eeasy lah”, he helpfully explained “My Chinese name aaah…is Chee Song ….meh. And my last name is Ng”. And as he said his last name, he let out a sound that seemed to emerge from some place between the stomach and the bottom of the throat - a sound, rather than a word. I nodded sagely, told him I got it, and that it was indeed simple. Wow! He had a sound for a last name! It took me another two years to get Chinese surnames like “Ng”, “Chng”, and “Sng” right. Oh yeah, what’s in a name. Indeed!

If the Chinese did this to my name, others were not far off. The sophistication might have been different, but maul they did. More stories on names of course on yet another blog, some other day.