Kunju Mary

I’m going to be a father soon. Technology has been kind enough to inform us that our child is going to be a girl. Honey and I will be keeping the Syrian Christian tradition alive by naming her Mary – my mother’s name. At home she will be called Kunju Mary.

The prefix Kunju – which means little – is added to most names to elimnate confusion. On my mother’s side, there are about two dozen Rose. My sister – Rosemol at home and Rosamma officially is one of them.

Over the years family names seem to disappearing from Syrian Christian names. This time when I renewed my passport I made it a point to place Puthenparambil as my surname and Jacob Joseph as my new double barreled first name. When I take up my new assignment (will update you guys soon) I’m going to have my cards printed Jacob Puthenparambil.

The reason I didn’t have Puthenparambil in the first place is two fold. One I (and my parents) thought it was perhaps too long. And since we were abroad most of the time, why bother explaining and spelling Puthenparambil is every-time we had to fill a form or state our names?

Even in India, my uncles initialised their names. PC Thomas, PC Chacko, PJ Kurian etc. Around the time I was born, a new trend in naming starting is my community, although we were baptised with Christian names, officially kids started to me named…. how do I put it…. hmm…. bharatiya generic?

For example I have cousins named Babu, Lakshmi, Ajit, Anju, Lulu, Meetu etc. I too flirted with the idea of giving my children (If and when I had them) Sanskrit names but decided against it as I felt the Syrian Christian identity has to be revived. There is something that moves me when I hear or see the name Kuruvilla, Chacko, Thomachan, etc.

My concern that Puthenparambil might be too long far practical use in the modren world quickly vanished when I saw the visiting card of my good friend Adam. He was from Poland and his surname was Skyprkskck. Shorter than my surname but still at-least mine had vowels :)

So there you have it, Kunju Mary will be Mary Puthenparambil.