One of my European friends said a few years ago for the first time in Edinburgh a Chinese asked her what her name means. She said I have no answer for that, because "names are just names".
This is much in contrast with the Eastern belief about the names. My Syrian and Turkish friends also admitted that they have always considered meaning of the names in their culture.
Why do we concern the meaning of names?
I recall Farhan Akhtar [the Indian director, actor and singer] once asked Shahrukh Khan what his name means. And after he replied it means "prince like face" or "King's face". he continued he think that names "affect personality". In a way he wanted to say that part of Shahrukh Khan’s success in his career and life is because of his name. And sarcastically SRK connected himself to Prince Charles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KDcXi-EkBM&feature=related (the third min)
But literally should names have meanings or connote something?
The Wind Journeys. (Colombia, 2009) 117´ 19/04/2013
13 years ago
Meaning of a name as a social construction depends on what/how people make meaning of a name whether the owner likes it, or not. Some times it even does not depend on its etymologies! ... But one can find some facts in Akhtar's quotation that the name affects the personality and/or maybe its owner fate. By the name we can reach a variety of information about the person e.g. her/his family background (ethnicity, religion, language, socio-economical status, gender, and so on) that could (pre)define our way to interact her/him and her/his roles, as well. Then name (and naming) has two different faces at the same time. On its one side it does load some pre-defined meaning to the person and on the other side the person can escape from some of those meaning (but not all of them)!
ReplyDeleteThanks Behzad, but what I try to pinpoint is that there is a different attitude towards names in Western and Eastern culture. Does it show something to you?
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