The phenomenon I see is a lot of people had Sanskrit names, which have the ‘ph’ sound and they are spelt and pronounce as ‘f’ somehow, it make the small , it makes them feel most civilized, if we have the f pronunciation, not blaming anybody, but which is, see some of the popular names so Shephali is the Sanskrit word, it’s a popular name, if you search on LinkedIn, you will see 8500 results with the f spelling and only 400 with the ph spelling, which is correct, because its Shephali that’s the name.
Similarly praphulla. the Hindi word phul comes from phull. so somebody says fulo ka tharah sabka kehana he, fulom ka nahi hai, if you say fulom ka kehana he, its likes fools you know. so phulom ka kehana he, so the name is praphulla. but nobody says its ph spelling is all f and similarly, we have the jh spell is being spelt as z and or Zee as saying the you as. So we have a name called Jhankar which means Jingling / clanking and the number of spelling are, well, in this case it’s still Jh is more. In Maharashtra and Gujarat, a name popular among girls, Jhalak means the glimpse. we have the so calls Jhalak diklaja a dance show right so. But its spells z a leke by many people Zalak. So we are not even spelling them properly and then the pronunciation of Anuswara is wrong also. So, in the south if you see, in fact, in the name of author of “autobiography of a yogi”, it is spelt Paramahamsa, ‘h a m s a’, that’s how it should spelt. but more or less you spell it’s as ns. So some common sense on spelling and pronunciation.
And even brands, so it is actually the word Saphal which means successful, but we can’t spell it correctly, we can’t pronounce it correctly and its Safal and somehow it feel very polished about saying Safal and somebody says Saphal, I don’t know, some people looked down up on it, it must be restrict man saying Safal, can’t say Saphal, its Safal.
Now we talk about gender abuse, say not to gender abuse, yes, absolutely, say not to gender abuse everywhere including in names. if we want Sanskrit names then let’s not abuse gender in Sanskrit, that’s one of my request. I see many masculine Sanskrit words are used as name for girls, we have Garima, we have Mahima, we have Madhurima, these all are masculine word in Sanskrit, the suffix there is imanic. so, yes, they are used, but in Sanskrit the word in masculine.
So as from Sanskrit point of view, it is not correct. Then we have about Nidhi, Vidhi, Samadhi. Well I know people, some people in close friends and family circle also have these names. Nothing personal. I am just saying these words are masculine in Sanskrit. That’s why, you have, we know a person name is Karunanidhi, Nidhi is masculine word and Karunanidhi means somebody who is full of Karuna, who is full of compassion, Nidhi means Treasure or abodeand we have Kalanidhi, Kalanidhi maran. So Nidhi being a masculine word, Kalanidhi and Karunanidhi and even Shrinidhi make perfect sense as names for man. But somehow nidhi is almost entirely used for women only now. These words end in dhi and also do Riddhi, Samriddhi but they are feminine because the suffix there is different.
So, one cannot blindly say that something that ends in this sound and this consonant could be masculine or feminine. It depends on what the suffix is. Then we see the words like Tejasvi, Manasvi, Yashsvi these are masculine in Sanskrit. so, we have Tejasvi surya, young member of Parliament from Bengaluru, Tejasvi is a man or is a boy, the feminine version would be Tejasvini or similarly Manasvini or Yashsvini. but we see Tejasvi name for girls also similarly Manasvi or Yashsvi as a name for girls and women also. Kiran is masculine in Sanskrit, we see Kiran More, we also see Kiran Bedi and Kiran Mazumdar-shaw.
We have quite a lot of gender abuse quote and quotes in modern names. Many neuter words are used as name for boys. So we have Vyoma, Akash, Ambar., all these words are neuter in Sanskrit. If somebody comes, people come to me for checking the gender for the name also, as I say, if I come across such a suggestion, I say look this is a neuter, it’s your decision, it’s a neuter word in Sanskrit, if you want to modify to masculine word, you can easily change it, say to Vyomakesh, which is the name of Shiva. Similarly Akashadeep which is the masculine word in Sanskrit and sometimes people change a feminine word and make it a name for a boy. For example Isheekaa, it’s a Sanskrit word which had three meanings, the eye of an elephant, reed, which is used to write earlier, which had reed pencil, reed calligraphy and a type of grass. In the Mahabharath, Ashvatthama makes an Arrow from an Isheekaa grass, Isheekaa blade. So that’s a feminine word, but then people change in to Isheek and say ok, I used this name of a boy. we will come to such example. Similarly Thejas and Ojas is very popular name especially in Gujarat. Thejas and Ojas are both neuter in Sanskrit, can be easily modified to Tejasvi and Ojasvi which would be masculine and Tejasvini and Ojasvini would be convey. Sampat is the name, I know people with the name Sampat who are, who are man and Sampat is actually a feminine word in Sanskrit.
