Cultural Note on Names

One of the students I work with here--Mangilal, who is 12 or so (no one knows their exact age here)--told me recently that his parents are changing his name to Chandrasekar. Their reason for changing their child's name to that of a famous Indian freedom fighter is that "mangi" means "one who asks for things, or wants things too much." They are afraid that such a name will give those grading the national 10th grade exam a bad first impression of their son from the start.

--Further background: 10th grade here is sort of like 12th grade in the states. After you finish 10th standard, you take a test that will determine not only whether or not you can advance to 11th and 12th standards, but also what you will be able to study: business, engineering and science, or the arts. So this test is a massive deal and is unfair in all sorts of ways that I will not get into here.--

So, Mangilal's parents changed his name. However, there are many other Mangilals in the surrounding villages, so we set out to find out why it is such a popular name if its connotations are supposedly bad. What we found out fascinated me. If someone's child falls ill as an infant, which happens frequently here, parents will change the infant's name to Mangi (for a girl) or Mangilal (for a boy) in express to the gods the extent to which they want to keep their child.

For the time being, we are calling Mangilal Mangilal, until someone tells us to do otherwise. Incidentally, he is an amazing kid, with a voice like an angel. We are all making him teach us this beautiful Hindi folk song about Radha and Krishna. Maybe I will sing it for you sometime.