What's in a Name?

Your name has a lot of impact on your personality and an indirect effect on others. There are certain qualities that a name should have in order to have the right effect.

Call-ability
A while ago a friend of mine who was about to have a baby told me that she wanted to name her first born Ferdinand and asked me for an opinion. I told her that a name should be very much callable. Upon her inquiry I told her to carry out a small name calling test. Simply open your kitchen door and on top of your voice call your chosen name for about 10 times. If it sounds right and easy for you to pronounce and repeat a hundred times a day then that's the name suitable for your kid. She named her son Tom.

Meaning
To many people and cultures a name is just not a word for identifying a person like a cat part number from a catalogue but should have a meaning to it.

Like sunshine or blessings or something like that.

You will be surprised to know that there are names which have very different meaning in different languages. Like in Indian state of Kashmir Butt is a very common name. I hope you got the idea that it means something else in their language.

In other cultures the name is linked to events which have a significant link to the birth of a child. You all must have heard of the little Native American boy called Torn Tubber or the girl named two dogs chasing rabbit? These names may be parts of a joke but there is some truth to them as well.

Impact on Personality
Some cultures consider that names have an impact on the personality of an individual. Well the Irish postman name Brave-heart was afraid of poodles to start with so it cannot be labeled as a characteristic because Snoopy Doggie Dog never became a PI.

 Individuality of Names
Some consider that a name should be very individual.

People modify a good old common name to sound differently just to sound different to gain attention. This is a very commonly observed phenomenon in the music and the entertainment industry when someone fails to attract attention with their work so they go about getting attention with their name.

Besides this some races are linked with strange names. A preschool teacher once told me that on the first day of her school session she had all new faces in her class and to be sure who is who they were asked to wear tags with their names on one side and addresses on the other. One Indian boy she recalls was a dull boy named Fruit Stand. Fruit Stand was not very responsive and all day and did not respond to his name at all. At the end of the day when kids were getting ready to get on their rides back home and their tags were turned around little Fruit Stand was found to be the resident of JOSEPH SAMUEL.

Names are names and they actually don't tell us much about the person besides what to address him or her. Don't expect Mr. Green to have that color or Sanders to have anything to do with sand. They are just names and that's it.