Name and the Named

The discussion on Anton Chekov in RR, made me do a minor research on the surname Chekhov. It is a well-known fact that Salman Rushdie throughout his post-fatwa life adopted a pseudo name. It is a historical irony that Rushdie received the life-changing call from a BBC journalist on the Valentine’s day in the year 1989. The hatred had its epicenter in the Iranian theocracy. Rushdie was immediately asked to invent a new avatar or an alias and as a fan boy of both Chekhov and Conrad, the name that came into his mind was Joseph Anton. He describes them as his ‘godfathers’ and he was greatly influenced by this quote from Joseph Conrad “I must live until I die, mustn’t I?” Salman Rushdie didn’t stop there. ‘Chekhov and Zulu’ is the name of the short story in the collection titled – East, West, where the themes are drawn from his life as Joseph Anton. The story is about two friends with codenames Pavel Chekhov and Hikaru Sulu who are entrusted with a mission to collect intelligence on radical Sikhs in Britain following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Pavel Chekhov is also the name of the character in the Start Trek series and it was played by an actor by the name Anton Yelchin from 2009-2016. 

The act of naming has become quite rampant these days. I would like to pinpoint two instances where names where changed due to some political drama. President Trump referred to Tim Cook as Tim Apple during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board. The Apple CEO has replaced his last name with Apple logo on his twitter profile. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cortège renamed their twitter handle to Chowkidar Narendra Modi in an attempt to thwart the opposition jibe based on the name ‘chor’.

Just few days back, I came upon this interesting thread of exchanges in Twitter which appeared in the timeline of my favorite author – Manu S Pillai. 

What's your name?"

"Manu"

"I mean your full name."

"Manu"

"Arey your school name?"

"Manu"

"Is it short for something?"

Out of sheer frustration:

"Yes, Manmohan."

The excitement reached its pinnacle when our old RRian and MCCian P J George of the Hindu shared his version of it. 

What's your name?

- George

- But what's your Indian name?

- George

- No, what do they call you in India?

- E M S Namboothirippad

- Ah, so George...

My first name had many versions in different places that I have worked. In North Africa and the Middle-East they called me as Bremjith due to their issues with the plosives. In Thailand, they called me Plemjith due to their problems with approximant consonants.