Care to take a call on how you are called?
Sobriquets, appellations, monikers, handles and other names people play.
By ET Bureau | Updated:
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‘What’s in a name?’ Juliet asked Romeo, implying that what is called isn’t essential to one’s being and can be changed at will.
Five centuries later, an American singer, Prince Rogers Nelson took her at her word and renamed himself nine times, using tags like Tora Tora and Nevermind, before settling for the self-referential The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, or Tafkap.
Such moniker multiplication is contrary to Gertrude Stein’s emphatic assertion that ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’.
Names of an unconventional kind, however, while conforming to the law of identity, might run foul of other regulatory requirements. A case in point is that of the newborn son of Elon Musk of Tesla fame, and his musician partner who calls herself Grimes, who has been named X Æ A-12 by his proud parents.
Many of those who follow Musk on Twitter were stumped by the heterodox handle, their bemusement undiminished by Grimes’ explication of the gender-neutral name that the X stands for ‘the unknown variable’, the Æ is a reference both to love and artificial intelligence, and that A-12 is a type of airplane.
However, spoilsport sticklers are claiming that the law in California will not permit official registry of such a name, which includes numbers, while sceptics dismiss the whole thing as a publicity ploy, and what in the vernacular might be called a ‘naam ke vaaste’ exercise.
You live with your name all through your life! It is not just something that goes on your birth certificate.
There's no denying the fact that most celebrities love to create a little attention for themselves. More often than not, they're also creative. So what do you get when you have a group of people that crave attention and want to come up with stuff no one has ever thought of before? A whole lot of crazy baby names, that's what!
There are some celebrities who go with good old-fashioned names, but then there's the category of stars who go all out and conjure up names that could be considered downright weird.
Like these.
In Pic: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have announced the birth of their second daughter, who they have named August after she was born this month.
(Image: Facebook)
Five centuries later, an American singer, Prince Rogers Nelson took her at her word and renamed himself nine times, using tags like Tora Tora and Nevermind, before settling for the self-referential The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, or Tafkap.
Such moniker multiplication is contrary to Gertrude Stein’s emphatic assertion that ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’.
Names of an unconventional kind, however, while conforming to the law of identity, might run foul of other regulatory requirements. A case in point is that of the newborn son of Elon Musk of Tesla fame, and his musician partner who calls herself Grimes, who has been named X Æ A-12 by his proud parents.
Many of those who follow Musk on Twitter were stumped by the heterodox handle, their bemusement undiminished by Grimes’ explication of the gender-neutral name that the X stands for ‘the unknown variable’, the Æ is a reference both to love and artificial intelligence, and that A-12 is a type of airplane.
However, spoilsport sticklers are claiming that the law in California will not permit official registry of such a name, which includes numbers, while sceptics dismiss the whole thing as a publicity ploy, and what in the vernacular might be called a ‘naam ke vaaste’ exercise.
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There's no denying the fact that most celebrities love to create a little attention for themselves. More often than not, they're also creative. So what do you get when you have a group of people that crave attention and want to come up with stuff no one has ever thought of before? A whole lot of crazy baby names, that's what!
There are some celebrities who go with good old-fashioned names, but then there's the category of stars who go all out and conjure up names that could be considered downright weird.
Like these.
In Pic: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have announced the birth of their second daughter, who they have named August after she was born this month.
(Image: Facebook)
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