Once I was settled in at work and started reading my daily dose of legal news, I saw the headline--"Man ID'd as Houston Gunman Was a 'Good, Competent Lawyer,' Ex-Partner Says." I was intrigued. I read on. The lawyer-turned gunman injured nine people before being killed by the police. The article mentioned the lawyer's name--Nathan DeSai. I assumed he must be of European origin, like DeSantis or De Palma.
More details started coming in eventually, including an interview clip with the lawyer's father by a reporter. The father looked South Asian and had a totally Indian-sounding name. And now for the first time I started thinking, could it be that Nathan was someone who changed his name? And the DeSai is actually 'Desai,' a common Indian last name? I was right. Apparently he changed his name from Niren Desai to Nathan DeSai in 2001.
This business of changing one's name has always interested me. Sometimes it is motivated by sheer practicality. I can see if your first or last name is so long that there are not enough boxes in the forms, then you could be tempted to cut it to a more manageable length. Sometimes it is just a natural outcome without anyone formally changing the name. My son's name is Jyotishko. His caregivers started calling him Jojo when he went to his infant daycare. He started responding to that. So even though he has another nickname--we Indians often do--the diminutive version of his formal name stuck with him. My own name 'Madhumita' became shortened to 'Mita', because--get this!--the information technology guys at University of Maryland, my graduate school, said I had to choose a login name that is 'no more than six letters long'! (Boy, I came to America as a graduate student a very long time ago!) And 'Madhu' was already taken. I did not choose Mary or Maddie though, that would potentially create a confusion about my ethnicity or religion. Not that anything is wrong with that. But at least in Nathan DeSai's case, I am left to wonder whether he changed his name to deliberately create a confusion regarding his race or religion, so that he appears more 'mainstream' to his prospective clients. Kind of like how Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz became Jon Stewart, or Carlos Irwin Estevez became Charlie Sheen.
When my son was a bit younger, he once asked me, perhaps out of sheer curiosity, why we did not choose a more "American" name for him. I told him that if he is good, people will have to take notice, irrespective of whether he has an easy name or not, just like people once took notice of a "skinny kid with a funny name," who went on to become the President. I showed my son the video of Obama's famous speech, and he got his answer.
In case you are curious what name we chose for our puppy, let's just say he is named after a very chompable thing recognized equally in India and in America. We named him Biscuit. Goes well with his brown coat, doesn't it?
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