The name game: Acing the 'A's

I belong to a generation where names beginning with the letter ‘S’ were hugely popular. My sister, me and loads of cousins and friends were part of this ‘S’ club (elite club, we thought) and we felt very proud too. A string of beautiful and meaningful names!

To get a good idea about its popularity, one need to look no further than my engineering class. We had two sections in my chosen stream and each section had about 60 students. In my section, there were 50 students whose names started with ‘S’, each being unique, with only a sprinkling of ‘R’s, ‘T’s, ‘U’s and ‘V’s. That’s quite a stunning proportion. Now, a generation later, I started seeing that the mighty ‘S’ was slowly fading into the ordinary and getting replaced by the letter ‘A’. Many of my friends’ and cousins’ children have names starting with ‘A’ and they either had a ‘new’ ring to it or were a re-discovered Sanskrit name.

I often wondered why any parent would do that to their child, that is, give them the possibility of being roll number-1 in the class, especially those that spelt their kid’s name with a double ‘A’. You never want to be the first one in a viva exam!

The list began to grow and I can confidently say that the position of ‘S’ has been usurped. As I was thinking of all these ‘A’ names and wondered what it would be like in a class full of them, it suddenly hit me. It would be a class that could practice its ‘alliterations’ very well and maybe make a poem or two out of it.

Here’s one that comes to my mind: Anaya ate an apple. Anaya accidentally ate Anne’s apple. Anaya accidentally ate Anne’s apple, angering Anne. An angered Anne accused Anaya. An anxious Anaya apologized and asked Anne’s absolution. An appeased Anne absolved Anaya. Anaya appreciated Anne and announced Anne an Angel!

Also, anagrams are astoundingly aplenty. (an alliteration again! - this one too!) Anaya - Ayana - Aanya - Aayna - Ayaan; Aruna - Anura; Aira - Aria; Aavish - Aashvi. Oh! It’s too fascinating and too addictive to stop.

If I were their English teacher, I would make them do these kinds of exercises all the time. Well, I’ll just say that the ‘A’s are here with a bang and here to stay.

I love ‘A’ names as much as I love ‘S’ names. I’ve proven it by naming my daughter with an ‘A’ name. I did show some mercy and spared her the double ‘A’. She could still be in the second batch of the viva exam.