Samadhi’s Ramblings
For those who are not familiar with the word ‘Anthroponomastics’ - a
branch of Onomastics - it means ‘the study of personal names’, a field
which touches on linguistics, history, anthropology, psychology,
sociology, philology and a whole lot more.
This applies to the rest of the world but Sri Lanka has a whole new
and totally different culture for ‘naming’ their fellow humanoids, which
are either understatements, overstatements or just aptly hilarious.
The father calls out for the daughter “Chooty baba look who is here
to see you” and you suddenly become aware of this tumbling noise,
getting louder by the second. As if a dozer is headed your way at sixty
miles per hour !
Enter ‘Chooty’ a fat woman stomach bulging out, love handles and all
and you are so sure that there is nothing ‘chooty’ about her. Then you
start to wonder, why the heck call her chooty?
 Perhaps
the father or whoever christened her thus never foresaw her great
potential to reach large sizes! And then there are ‘Sudus’ who are so
kalu that the only thing you’d be able to see of them in the dark is
their teeth. Well that explains it then, at least their teeth are white.
My cousin recently told me of a certain Saman in their class, whose
mouth stank so much that everyone was used to holding their breath a few
seconds after he opened his mouth. The worst thing was that he always
sat right in front of the air-conditioner.
But that’s all about mismatched names but what about the perfectly
but inadvertently apt names, the Premasiri Romeos and the like. In fact
one of those Premasiries in one of my friends’ office has been
rechristened ‘Love siri’ because of his skirt chasing ways.
A foreigner visited one of my colleague’s houses once. When he was
served sweet meats, he has found ‘halapa’ so tantalizing that he had
asked what it was. When my colleague replied ‘halapa’, the foreigner
said “that would have been a nice name for a girl.” I wonder how ‘Halapa
Smith’ or ‘Halapa Brown’ would be for a name of a British woman!
There are so many hilarious stories woven around foreigners and names
- not all of them fictitious - that it would take days for me to exhaust
all the yarns. But one in particular stuck in my mind - a true story -
which happened in a famous and established bank in Sri Lanka.
A foreigner friend of the bank’s big brass came to Sri Lanka and two
employees were selected to take him sightseeing. One of the employees
was particularly over enthusiastic and eager to please the foreigner.
The threesome was walking around town when they saw a tree covered in
red ant nests. When the foreigner looked to his escorts the less
enthusiastic employee knew that they were headed for trouble and avoided
the foreigner’s inquiring gaze. But it was a little too late for the
ever attentive, enthusiast. When the foreigner inquired what the tree
was called, the only phrase the enthusiastic employee could muster was
‘Dimi tree’!
The foreigner was so taken with the name - which must have sounded
like the name of a Russian - that he proudly announced his discovery to
his friends at the bank. The boss was kind enough to advice the
eager-to-please employee and he saved his skin with only a hurt ego and
the nick name Dimitree. |
