Had his parents known better, they might have reconsidered their ill-informed choice of name for him. A toddy-tapper from the remote south Goa village Kale, in Sanguem taluka, Hitler was serving a life-term for two murders; one committed in Goa, the other in Karnataka. He has spent half his life in jail, doubling up as the prison barber. This is his third prison break, and officials shudder at the thought of him on the loose. The last time he broke out, he killed a man in Karnataka.
But the question remains. Why did Fernandes’ parents burden him with such a dark name? In their intriguing book ‘Freakonomics’ economist Steven D Levitt and journalist Stephen J Dubner try to make some sense of the queer logic (or unlogic) behind people’s choice of names. They point out that Black Americans are most likely to give their children distinctive and unusual names as an assertion of their identity. “An overwhelming number of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be,” the authors argue, though they assert “the name isn’t likely to make a shard of difference”.
‘Hitler’ — whatever its historical and murderous implications — is not an uncommon first name in Goa. Neither are Stalin, Lenin, Churchill, Mussolini, Kennedy, Tagore - to mention just a few. A sociological study might perhaps make more sense of the curious choice of names among Goan Catholics.