Did you guys know that around 17 years ago while I was studying engineering, I had decided to name my daughter Tapasya (vaguely means Penance but is one of those Sanskrit words that don't have an English synonym)? She was to be named after a delightfully enchanting girl from the Saboo Siddique engineering college who was setting the ramp on fire at the college cultural festival fashion show circuit.
I didn't know then that I would ever get married or have a daughter or agonize over what name she should have.
'Tapasya' the name fell out of favour when one of the unbearably interminable Hindi daily soaps named its principal antagonist Tapasya. Those were dark times; when thanks to Missus, I had to endure the daily nocturnal torture of watching the horror of horrors that was that daily soap.
Before Beckett was born, both Missus and I went through a rigorous exercise of searching for the perfect name. You can read about it here. But nothing that we got or found enthused us.
By then I had made up my mind that if a boy my child were to be, Aragorn he would be called; and if a daughter were to bless our house, Arwen she would be.
There is no way Missus would have allowed me to name our son Aragorn, but Arwen seemed like something both of us could arrive at a consensus on.
I also meandered between names like Aafreen (Beautiful in Urdu) and Kashish (Charm in Urdu), but both were summarily rejected by everyone else in the family for sounding too 'Not Hindu'.
So I finally pitched Arwen with great hope that 'Noble Maiden', 'Beautiful', 'Friend of the People' would be acceptable to everyone. But Missus swept it aside with one stroke of her hand saying Arwen will get bastardised to Arvind (popular Indian male name meaning lotus). Also given that Arvind is the name of the current chief minister of Delhi, who I don't hold in too high an esteem, Arwen as my daughter's name was done and dusted once and for all.
That's when I started looking for names closest to Arwen. So there was Aarvis, Avril, Aarna, Aarshi and a few others till I stumbled upon Aarvi.
What immediately struck me about Aarvi the name was that it meant multiple things in Sanskrit (Peace, Melodious) and in one of the Nordic dialects it meant Fearless. It effortlessly met my three criteria of being uncommon, mellifluous, and meaningful. And more importantly won the heart of Missus with its simplicity.
By the time Atman made use aware of the impending and inevitable 'Are we' and 'RV' jokes, the horse had already bolted, Missus and her father had already made up their mind, and I had had enough of struggling with name searching.
And that is how Beckett was christened Aarvi.
Aarvi is now 10 months old and does a perfect split and can now go from sitting to crawling all by herself.
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