Wednesday, June 8, 2011

What's in a name?

         The name is Maithili..

How do you feel when someone pronounces your name in the wrong way by giving it an extra long tone or stretching the vowels at the end?  

With me it has come to a point that I no longer bother correcting anyone! 
My name has more often than not been spelled wrongly on my certificates (which I had to correct!) and I have faced the frustration and confusion due to my name being called out as "Mitali".

The next stage (if at all my name is pronounced at first go) is "What does it mean?"

Well it means nothing.. After spending my childhood perplexed over the same question and Mom just telling me "It's one of the name of Sita"  and then me being not satisfied with the answer and searching ,I came to a conclusion that Mom was right :)

It goes like, Sita's father was the King of Mithila and so he was called Mithilesh and as a system Sita also came to be known as Maithili. 
Note: This Sita I m talking about is from Ramayana (Sometimes I had to state even that..)

My name has been written as Mitali (most irritating one), Maithilee ( relative of Bret Lee :P), Mythili(possessiveness!), Maithali (dumb dumb dumb) and many more depending on the vowel selection of the writer!

Finally I came up with a solution! I let people keep nicknames for me and trust me it's much better than hearing my name recombined and presented..

I have a chain of nicknames.. 

Maiti : This is usually for the kids in my family.. It sounds soo cute when they call me like that.. Grown ups don't even think of using it because it doesn't sound soo cute from them!

Meetu : I don't know how this started but this is what some really close and special people in my life call me.

Cheenu : Mommy calls me this when she is all lovey dovey for me :)

Mili : This was originally started by my friend Ranjith as an attempt to shorten my 8 lettered name to 4letter.. Now I see even Arjun using it :P 

Militiah : Well its my twitter handle. Nothing more but an anagram of my name MAITHILI.. But many of my friends use this name now for me.

Lee: This was given to me by one of my friends called Tirth and it still remains copyrighted by him.. :)

Angel : This is used only when I am extra sweet ( I m usually sweet) to my friends !

Well these are the top ones.. There are many more ..

When I was young everyone used to call me Chilloo.. don't know why?
Then some nicknames like Noggie, Gabbu were given I don't know for what reason.

Dad still calls me "Baale" which means "baby" in tulu..  Guess  I would never grow up for him.

Bro started this name called "Kumba" (inspired by Simba i guess) to tease me and with the variation in his mood it changes to "Kumbo" , "Kumbda", "Kumbdo" and recently he gave this smart ass idea to build a temple called "Kumbeshwari" where all lazy people ,who sit in front of their laptops all day, would be the devotees. One joker he is!

Nicknames are better to be used if one cannot spell the right name! 

I love it when someone figures my name and makes the effort to spell it right! 

So I end this post with the question


16 comments:

Arjun said...

lol.. The subtle humour in this post... nice :)

You have one hell of a long list there.. Lucky!! :)

Btw, I dint copy Mili, it just happened to coincide. So, I can still put my collar up. :P

Cheers..!!
Arjun

Wings of Harmony said...

Maithili :D My language too :D :D That's how I remember we started talking :) :) I love your name...makes me feel nice :D :D

Anonymous said...

this thing happened when its little difficult to pronounce someone's name
but ur name is not so difficult
most of the person knows that it was the name of Sitaji

maithili said...

@Arjun : thank you :)
yeah had to be coincidence ! I never told you about the mili name :P

Happy that you got the humor :)

@MSM :Yeah i too loved that fact that you loved my name and I didnt have to explain what it meant! You spoke it ;)

@Chirag :People who know mythology don't need to be told but many of the times they don't know the other names of Sita ..

Blasphemous Aesthete said...

Hey Maithili, if we'd just remove the 'h' from your anagram, that leads us to Militia. I just hope you don't intend to go rogue someday. :P

Cheers,
Blasphemous Aesthete

maithili said...

@Blasphemous Aesthete : I couldn't place that 'h' anywhere else and have my anagram sound good ! :)
I dont intend to turn rogue anytime ! :)

Ankita said...

hey nice post...and a nice name as well...:)...and I guarantee you I will pronounce it right...read few of your stories...very interesting...:)

maithili said...

@Ankita
firstly welcome to my blog
thanks for the effort :) and
thanks for the follow :)

S said...

I can so relate to your post. My name is skewed around at people's convenience and moods.
Saurabh, Sourabh, Saurav, Surav, Sorav, and a lot more. Is Sourav so difficult ?! They make me forget my own names' spelling at times :|

Maithili is a wonderful name and it is the best one out of all the nicknames I've read here on your post, and I knew the meaning already coz I have a friend whose name is Mithilesh.

maithili said...

Yes indeed the your name has many variations! I myself check twice when I write your name :) not difficult but because I know people called saurav, saurabh etc etc.. so have to be cautious not to confuse it :P

Well I love my name because of its rhythm courtesty the "i"s in my name and it irritates me when people play with it :P

Hmm Mithilesh! you know my Daddy :P from Ramayana :)

Red Handed said...

Maithilee ( relative of Bret Lee :P)

Poor you..even my name is pronounced as well as written the way it shudnt be :(

Jyoti Mishra said...

this happens very often when u have a name which people find difficult ... even mine whose name is so simple its been mutated in numerous forms joti, joyti, joeti...
hhehe sometimes I feel like laughing and sometimes it irritates like hell.

But now i don't bother to correct them.

Nice read !!!

S said...

Being honest, I checked your name's spelling too before I posted my last comment! :P

Stay in rhythm :)

maithili said...

@Redhanded : HAve to know ur name to see for myself :P

@jyoti mishra: yes indeed people actually write this name in many ways. I have a friend called Jyothi .. even heart of Joti :P

@Saurav :) atleast you check and spell right :P thanks for that :)

RAHUL said...

Nice blog :)
To relate to the blog i must say my surname is similarly tampered and because of your twitter handle i m more used to Militiah. So Militiah it is :)

maithili said...

@ Rahul : thanks :) Well its frustrating to correct such mistakes :P Well I m more used to Militiah now :P after reading it soo many time on my TL :P