Whats in a name?

The other day i was chatting with one of my class mates. From our current work status, the topic changed to her family. She has a baby girl. I asked her name and "Krishna Tulasi" it was. Such a lovely name. I praised her for selecting a very good name. Like every other parent, her husband's and her thoughts would have circled around grandma's grandpa's name or god's name or a name which has syllables from both the parents' name (this is becoming a fashion now a days). Is it that simple to keep a name? Few may say it is and few may say it is not.
For those who say it is not, probably they have the issues that they face in satisfying all the close one's expectations. Mother-in-law might come up with her father's name or some mentor might come up with a god's name or a crazy relative might come up with a freedom fighter's name. Too bad the child can have only one official name. It is no wonder parents avoid this dilemma by keeping a house hold name and an official name. Poor child it has to respond to two different words everytime.

My point of view is completely different from this. I see it from a child's angle. Just like child cannot choose its parents it cannot choose its name. Yes, they can change it but how many people do that. Even the ones who do it will have superstitious reasons but not a egoistic reason. For example, in my friend's case, her daughter has a lovely name Krishna tulasi. Since she is a girl, it is highly likely that they will call her tulasi shortly. But there would be always peers, friends, neighbours and relatives who will cut short the name further to save words as if it is an endangered species. Some would call her tuls and some crazy people will call her lasi. For those who think this is unlikely, consider this. There was a girl in a college by the name Saraswathi but called sasi. Saraswathi and sasi are like two ends of the galaxy still the short form for saraswathi is sasi.

Every household in tamil nadu would have forgotten the original name of thols in kolangal serial is tholkapian, a beautiful tamil name. We really don't have control over what short form would people around us would come up. It's better if we move on just accepting it as a part of life. A guy like Ambalavanan might end up with Amba even worse Ramba. If you expect padma raj to be called as raj. Sorry people might prefer Padma. The name shortening is parodied in almost all the stage dramas. Crazy mohan when running out of jokes would return to his age old joke.
"You call Venkat venki, then will you call Mahesh Monkey"

When we were in college we didn't do this much injustice to the name Mahesh. We gave it a superb short form "Maxi" something like Maximus from gladiator. We called Pradeep Prad giving it a US touch. Though it might sound like fraud, it was a name in vogue. Not everytime we were this kind. There was a guy called Krishnan. He preferred Krish as short name so that he can get even with Hrithik roshan but we called him with the household name Kicha. When in a very good mood, i would call him "Ucha" which means urine.

Name doesn't always reflect what people are. I knew a ramasamy who looked like hot model, a Karupasamy who was fair, a Vidya who didn't study well, a lakshmi who was poor. So parents please be careful while giving a name to your child.

Avoid names like
Arokia raj
Dhandapani
Rathi
Ajith
Aravind samy
Pichamuthu

Moreover, when i was a student i preferred to be the last student in a batch so that we would get time to prepare ourselves. We won't be first up in the line of fire. Typically a class would be divided into two batches. A to P names would fall in first batch and R to Z would fall in second batch. So keep a name starting with I, K, S, T, your child would be indebted to you forever.

Time to answer these questions.
What is your name and its short form? How would you like your name to be shortened?