Black and Bright and Beautiful

[Vanbakkam Vijayaraghavan]

On Tue, 14 Nov 2000 16:49:49 -0800, Periannan Chandrasekaran
<perichandra at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>--- Vidyasankar Sundaresan <vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> "C.R. Selvakumar" <selvakum at VALLUVAR.UWATERLOO.CA> wrote:
>>
>> >     As far as I know Tamil Brahmins, by and large,
>> >     do not name their children in Tamil. So it is
>> ....
>> >     I don't know whether this was the situation, say some 1000 years
ago.
>> >
>>
>> Even a 100 years ago, it wasn't so.


Tamil brahmins use names like Thirumalai, Thirunarayanan, Kuppan,
Kuppuswamy, Muthu, etc whose sanskrit "content" is minimal.


>
>That makes one wonder what exactly changed in the society for such a major
>shift in naming policy among brahmins; of course non-brahmin Tamils also
have
>completely abandoned the same collection of  "traditional" names.
>It could be that brahmin Tamils started that process early this century and
>non-brahmins simply followed them.


This is more to do with mass media and modern cultural integration on an
all India basis. Nowadays names Suresh, Ramesh, Ashok, etc with a north
Indian ending or ring to it is common. This cuts across caste lines. Tamils
, who have stayed in the North India for a length of time for job reasons
have named their offspring , boys and girls, along these lines. There are
also Ajit naidus and Arun Mudaliars along with Ramesh Iyer.


This process has accelerated in the last 30 years with cinema, Radio and TV.

BTW, this "north Indian" cultural accuturation has affected not only
personal names but also dress- again irrespective of caste. About 25 years
back one would hardly see south indian girls in Shalwar kameez, mostly they
would be "dhavani" or half-saree. Now among college girls shalwar kameez is
a la mode.