A brief history of popular names for children: The Way We Were by Poonam Saxena

Shankar and Ishaan are both names for Shiva. So why was one so preferred in the past and the other so popular now?

I just finished reading an article about celebrity baby names in the West and have been in a daze since. Ed Sheeran’s child is Lyra Antarctica Seaborn, Nicolas Cage’s is Kal-El, Kate Winslet’s goes by Bear Blaze, Sylvester Stallone’s is called Seargeoh and, the best of the lot: Elon Musk’s child is named X Æ A-XII.

Elon Musk’s child is named X Æ A-XII. It’s possible that wouldn’t even be legal under Russia’s new laws for parents. (Twitter / @elonmusk)

I don’t think we have anything quite so inventive here, but there are certainly unusual names around, names that few of us had ever heard even a few years ago. A baby website that lists popular modern names for Indian children says current favourites are, among others, Advik, Ayush, Daksh and Ivaan for boys, and Kimaya, Pihu and Vanya for girls.

Very short names are all the rage. Tia, Myra, Isha, Ira, Zara, Neel and Jai do roll off the tongue and cross over well, in the likely event that the offspring ends up abroad, at least for a spell.

Names change, of course, with every generation. Indeed, some eras are marked by certain names. In Premchand’s novels, written in the early 1900s, you’ll find names that are very much of their time. Premashram (1922) is the story of two brothers named Premshankar and Gyanshankar. In the 1927 novel Nirmala, the lead character is married off to a much older man named Totaram, who has three sons named Mansaram, Jiyaram and Siyaram. In Karmabhoomi (1932), the two lead characters are named Amarkant and Sukhda.

Premchand’s short stories are replete with characters named Sitasaran, Babulal, Phoolmati, Bholanath, Kamtanath and the like. Though there are shorter, simpler names in his stories too, like Prakash, Ramesh, Leela, Champa, Gokul and Padma, the longer ones have largely disappeared and, if they survive, sound very much like they belong to another age.

Nicknames of the time have vanished too — few people still call their children Munni, Munna, Chhotu or Binni, though many of us have older relatives still addressed thus affectionately.

Later nicknames such as Pinky, Sweety, Cutie and Dolly are viewed without any enthusiasm today. And let’s not even talk of the even-more-old-fashioned pet names like Dhanno and Lallan.

Names that were commonly found in the 1950s and ’60s have poor ratings today. Asha Parekh, a star of the 1960s, played characters named Sudha, Roopa and Shanta. Shammi Kapoor, a reigning star of the same era, went by names such as Raja, Madan, Rajesh, Sundar and Pritam. Later came the generation of Vicky and Sunny, Sapna and Priya. Then came the Poojas and Nehas, Nikhils, Karans and Natashas.

It’s difficult to say how and why certain names become popular at particular times. We can certainly identify some reasons. A big one is the role of celebrities. Amitabh Bachchan, Sourav Ganguly and Virat Kohli have inspired many new parents. As have Aishwarya Rai, Karisma Kapoor and Sushmita Sen.

Religion and mythology are permanent influences (there was a time when the initials LN could only mean Laxmi Narayan); but even here, parents seek out more unusual names today — say, Ishaan instead of Shankar (both names for Shiva). Today there is also a tendency to painstakingly seek out Sanskrit words with a profound meaning (Kairav, meaning born of water, or Shivansh, meaning son of Shiv).

But more often than not, name trends seem to gather life on their own — through a mysterious alchemy of word of mouth, the media (social media today), popular culture and the zeitgeist.

News events can have an odd bearing on names too. Babies were named Tsunami after the giant killer wave pounded coastlines in 2004. More recently, a couple in Raipur named their twins Corona and Covid. (Apparently, there is family pressure to rename the children.)

But perhaps one of the most unbelievable names in the world belongs to a Russian boy — BOChrVF260602, apparently derived from the child’s family name and date of birth (June 26, 2002).

Incidentally, a few years ago Russia passed a bill banning parents from giving their babies names that are foul words, numbers, titles or abbreviations. So Elon Musk, if he’d been Russian, would probably have had to try again.