Thursday, November 20, 2008

I'm not done with my name

No,not yet. Welcome to round 2 of the name-bashing. In my other post, 'Whts in a nme?' (still hurts to type words like that!), among other things, I said "Yes,I know my name isn't all that bad". I write today,because I think otherwise.

It all started with a classmate making fun of my name. Strange as it may seem, I've never been made fun of,over my name. Nicknames,yes. Crazy reactions and pronunciations,yes. But no one ever told me "Funny name! Haha!" and went on to deform my already handicapped name.Not until now. I was angry. Why me? Why do I have such a lame name? This frustration eventually led to curiosity(God knows how). I wanted to know more about my name. So I've been named after a Roman Goddess. Which Goddess? Whats the story built around her? And what does an aging teenager do,when faced with questions like these? Google.
I looked up 'Roman Goddess Merin' ,on Google. The link to my previous post(where I've mentioned the whole Goddess thing) sat on top of the result screen. My heart sank. As in, no other site on the www spoke of Roman Goddesses known by the name Merin? More research!!! I typed in 'Origin of name Merin' but apart from learning arbit possibilities of the origin, I was slapped across the face,again,with the fact that 'Merin' is not-a-feminine name. And well, no Roman Goddesses. Now I had just one option left. I called out, "Maa!".

Me: Ma,I ran a google search on my name..
Mom: So? Have nothing better to do now that your internals are over?
Me: Listen! There's nothing about any Roman Goddess with my name!!
..
Mom: *grins*
..
Me: *stare* What?
Mom: Took you so long to figure this out?
...
Voice in my head : WTF?! Does she mean what I think she means?! No way man! This is outrageous! Say something! Anything!!!
..
Me: What? *more of the lame my-last-brain-cell-just-died staring*
Mom: Oh it isn't the name of any Roman Goddess. Your dad and I just liked it.
Me: You mean...?! What the hell does my name mean then?! (Oh a couple of 'em cells were alive!)
Mom: We just liked the name. We didn't know what to tell you,so we thought Roman Goddess sounded nice.
Me: You lied to me all my life?! (No,this is not the effect of watching saas-bahu shows. Trust me,you actually react this way,in situations like this.)
Mom: Ok,sorry. But for me, it'll always mean Roman Goddess,ok?
Me: Who in-the-f'ing-name-of-Lewis-Hamilton cares what you would like to think?! You lied?! However did you come up with this name then? Where'd you find it?!
Mom: The Pandit told us your name had to begin with m and we wanted a 5 letter name. And your dad's name starts with m and my name begins with n. So we just put this all in together.
Me: (After spending 15 seconds trying to digest that) So you just had m---n and you filled in random alphabets in the middle?!
Mom: Look I don't remember how we came up with it, but its no big deal. You're my Goddess,ok? Its just a name. (And walks off,making me feel highly immature).

Voice in my head: No,wait,Just a name?! Hello? Its my name. Its like the frikkin' passport number that your passport bears or the whatever code the processor-chip of your computer has! Only much more important!! Come back!

But that stayed in my head. I felt like I'd been robbed. (Don't you call me dramatic,you haven't spent 19 years being called 'merin'!). My name actually had no proper origin/meaning/gender. This was sad. The pathetic, jump-into-the-path-of-a-moving-cycle type sad. I sat in my room for a while,along with my different personalities,trying to cope with the truth.

It wasn't very long before I went back to Google. 'Merin' has to have a meaning! It has to exist somewhere! I'm a frikkin' Goddess!! And I found a page alright. A page that spoke of a Deity named Merin. And how I wish I'd never looked for it!
So there exists a Deity of the name 'Olori Merin',worshiped by the Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa. Then again, its a HE. He's a God. But that's not the worst thing I was to find out. Here's exactly what that site had to say :

Olori-merin, possessor of four heads, is another god whose worship is nearly, if not quite, obsolete. He was the tutelary deity of towns, and was represented by a hillock, or, if no hillock existed within the precincts of the town, by an artificial mound.

Sacrifice was made to Olori-merin every three months, or four times a year, and always consisted of a new-born child not more than three or four days' old. The child's throat was cut by a priest, and the blood, caught in a calabash or earthen vessel, was placed on the summit of the mound, after which the flesh was sliced up into small pieces and buried in the mound. During this dreadful scene the mother had to be present. This sacrifice was called Ejodun (Eje-odun), "The season of blood."

Olori-merin had, as his name betokens, four heads, with which he watched the four points of the compass from the top of his mound, and it was believed that no war or pestilence could attack a town under his protection. He had the legs and feet of a goat. Sometimes, at -night, he appeared in the shape of a venomous serpent.
(If you think I'm SO messed up in the head that I would cook this up, here's the site. )

Now I have every right to scream, WHY ME?! Couldn't my parents have thought of some other set of alphabets to complete their ever-so-special m---n puzzle?! This flood of self-pity suddenly made way for enlightenment. The truth. Stark reality, if I'm allowed to make this sound fancy. Names are said to affect personalities...aren't they?

Now we know the root-cause of my spooky ideas! Next time I joke around saying "I need to see blood! or I'm going to slit his throat with a blunt knife,Joker style! or I'll frikkin' chop him into pieces,yank his intestines out and feed it to dogs!", you know whom to blame. Its NOT my fault. I was born normal; but over the years, my name worked on a couple of those personalities I shelter. And there was once a time when I thought a couple of disturbing Marilyn Manson songs that I liked made my brain think extreme,when frustrated.

When I reported my findings to my (permutation-combination loving) mother,she walked away,laughing-but I saw shock and a tinge of fear in those eyes. For those of you who haven't dismissed this as a ridiculous post by a jobless engineering student whose life revolves around her name(ahem...anybody?), you've no reason to worry. No,really. Nothing changes but for the one statement I would proudly announce when asked about the meaning or origin of my name. I'll probably spend the next one hour spoiling my soul with self-pity and then I should be back to my weird-er old ways. :)



Meanwhile, I prepared a wish-list(number1,draft1) for Christmas/New Years. I haven't asked for better hair/better genes et all, because they've featured on the list way too often(and have been ingored everytime). I've not asked for world peace and a solution to Global Warming because sane statements have always been a misfit in this blog. Here's what I'd like to ask for:

1. A Ferrari Fiorano 599. Yes, I frikkin' know that's too much to ask for,so how about flight and race tickets to ANY Formula1 race next season? (Preferably Imola or Belgium :) )

2. Hmmm,lets see.. more than 5 exam-less days per semester,in college? Wouldn't that be lovely!

3. A new brain. The last one I bought can't be used as it submitted itself to this disease they call 'rusting' and the one I'm using right now has to be discarded as repeated attempts at defrosting have failed. (This shows not only on the blog but also in my exam results.)

4. Santa/Mom-Dad can choose between a new vehicle, hormone-overpowering grey matter and make-me-a-good-programmer pills.

5.Like duh!, a new name. ( We're not past the one-hour mark yet.)




P.S. To certain members of the society who will find bright opportunities in this post :
Crude jokes about the new found connection this five lettered thing called name has,will not go down well with my system. This entire rant must be enough for you to understand that. If it isn't,I can always call upon snakes-at night. Ha!

42 comments:

soda said...

sooper post machi...total shtud stuff
:P...oh and u can call upon snakes at night eh myarin???
momma wont be with u at that time then :P

Somebody Else said...

I told you what I thought. Stud stuff!

Dark Covenant said...

Out of the world! Like i said, could almost hear every line into my ears. Very expressive! Great job Merin. Keep writing! :)

gautam dn said...

hehe...nice one...whats in a name? i mean you idolize a guy with such a weird surname...if it makes u any better, call me princess codswalla banana skin hammock goat ,for the rest of my life...whats in a name? its the person behind the name that matters..HI 5 to me...for giving such crap philosophy...VIRTUAL HI 5

nalini said...

come what may u are going to be a GODDESS/ANGEL to me ...always.

Be happy i did not have the net facility then.. you would have ended with a totally unique name then !!

If u hate the name so much you can legally change it(now that u are an ADULT!!) :D

nalini said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
nalini said...

I totally agree with Gautam Dambekodi.:) its only a name.

and im waiting for a day when people name their kids after u MERIN!! ;)

gautam dn said...

LOL! I hate my surname..Im gonna change my surname now that Im a legal adult.

gautam dn said...

I have honestly never thought you had a funny name.Its a nice, cute and unique name . The main thing being unique.For me its always ,some peepul tree joke ar something related to buddha.Everybody expects me to be in someway like Buddha. Rathe ahve a unique name and make my own mark

gautam dn said...

Worst was in school, Whenever the name Gautama Buddha was mentioned , everyone used to look at me.I never knew why. They all looked at me, expecting me to perform some magic trick or something..One day , i Just stood up and said Ta da and flourished my tie like a cloak .LOL

Unknown said...

Some Positives olori Merin can take from it:
1.U help the ever growing population to slow down at the rate of 4 per year & help increase the GDP of Yorobans
2.U can win the best invigilator's award OR can copy 4 times more than others in exams
3.U can win “The best Venomous appearing Serpent” in a fancy dress competition
4.U can actually remove the mirror(s) off Ur car(Ferrari Fiorano 599) & save few 100 Euros
5.Suppose if Sound waves loses the property of diffraction u can still hear from all the directions without turning
6.U can actually give some ideas to Intel, AMD, Motorola regarding multi core (multi head whence multi brain) processing & earn billions
7.Assign four of ur brains to finish 4 years on Engineering in single year, with each brain studying in 1 yr(Data hazard involved is ignored)

Note: Here U==Olori Merin, but if u feel even u want apply those positives, u can surely apply as I wont sue u(or anyone else for that matter) for Piracy or copyright infringement of positives

Merin Mandanna said...

Sudarshan aji,
I'm scared of snakes too. :P

Siri,Nandi
Thanks! :)

Gautam,
Schumacher is not a weird name back in Germany ok? but you deserve that virtual hi5! :D

MOM!,
I'm SO glad you didn't have net facility back then! 'a unique name..then?' What do you think 'merin' is,really? Yes,I bump into Merins ALL the time.There's one merin at the corner of every street,chopping flesh and what not. And i dont HATE my name..just.....!!!
Thanks for agreeing with Gautam. Bet he did a victory dance! Hmph!

Merin Mandanna said...

Gautam,
LOL!!!!! lol. you should blog. :P
And 'Dambekodi' is unique,dont bother changing it. :D

Arjun,
*bow down to you*
That was truly innovative! :D Good job! But I'm sure I wont be needing those ideas. :P

siddh said...

Gee sis.. your post had me laughing my lungs out to freaking out my neurons to what-the-helling-out my splintered flabbergasted remnants of thought. Maybe your name means, or will come to mean the divine outrageously awesome blogger.

But *coming down back to earth* I would give anything for a unique name, notwithstanding all the comments. A name that doesn't mean anything is so cool. (For all you know that tribal tongue you mentioned just rolls over that gory god's name in such a fervor with arbit click noises and contorted facial expressions that the author of that article chose random English letters to represent it)

Atleast people eventually call you by your name and there's no confusion when someone says Merin. It's unique. I would so like people to call me by name but it never happens.

Want a name swap? ;)

Anonymous said...

I googled for MERIN to give you some consolation. But no luck as such on that front :D :|
Like auntie says, What's in a name?!
People call me 'Shwetha', 'Shruthi' and everything except my name all the time. It's grown on me :D
You do have a nice name, lady! :)

Akshatha Hegde said...

I laughed harder at this than I laughed at Goblin going 'Merin Mandanna Emmmmm!'

Awesome! :D

Olori Merin..yahahahahahahaha.. :))

Merin Mandanna said...

Sid,
that was some comment bro! :D
No confusion when my name is called out,you say? Oh there is a different kind of confusion. Everytime a teacher calls out my name from the attendance register(at the start of the year/sem), he/she says 'Merin' and looks out at the guys,waiting for a hand to pop up. argh. And EVERY teacher takes nearly a minute to pronounce my name. I just butt in and say 'Merin-present',these days.

Swats,
your name too?!:O Good lord!!
And thanks :D

Aksie,
THAT coming from YOU is the best compliment I could ever get! :D :)

Merin Mandanna said...

Aks,
I remember Goblin. hehe. Remember how she'd say 'Lily Rose Martinnnnn'? and 'Vidya Ravindra Bhandarkar'? :D lol!

Akshatha Hegde said...

Lily Rose Marigold! :D

Nobody, however, remembers me calling you Merry. :(

Merin Mandanna said...

Lily Rose Marigold,yes! :D


Hey,Merry is my official nickname! :) Thats never going to change! :) And 'chotu',my all time favorite! :) :)

Bharath said...

LOL! I laughed when arjun told me abt this post and i laughed even more when i actually read it! Oh now all of it falls into place...last week u were "blood-thirsty" and all na? And chillax..names just some id for a person...you noe what some idiots (read goat alok etc) call me in coll na? I take it in the positive sense (and the TRUE MEANING) and not get affected at all! Cheers! :)

Merin Mandanna said...

Bharath, lol! :D Yes,a lot of people know what those guys call you! ;) Thanks man..Don't worry though.I don't take this thing about my name that seriously. :) Just saw an opportunity for a post,when i read the Olori-merin thing. :P

Vinay Hegde said...

Hey Merin,

On the other hand, imagine being in a college class with nine other people sharing your name! And imagine, the teacher calling out, "Vinay, 2, 3, 4, ..." instead of our names! We had to remember whichth Vinay each one of us was!
And yeah, you have a nice, littal name-cherish it :)
Once you go out into this wide weird world and see people with _really weird_ names you will thank your parents for Merin :)

Vinay Hegde said...

(LAN cut woes...) continuing..,

OR consider this:

Here in IITM, all of us are 'named' by our seniors during the interactive sessions (read as ragging). Everyone is known by their 'insti name' and not their original name. Many of the freshies end up getting names like this:
DCF-Dead Crow F*cker(!), CuteCunt, Gay, etc., (there are worse names) and mind you, they WILL be known _only_ by these names throughout their stay in IITM (even beyond, for their friends, seniors, juniors...).

Chew upon this and get back to me :P

Merin Mandanna said...

OK,ok..I get the point! :P (Jeez,I knew things were tough at IITs,but such names? heh!!)

I don't hate my name that much,really. :D Right.Never will I crib again.
:P

Unknown said...

Heyy, i dint find Merin in this list. So, itz a good name only, Chill & and more thing...
....I dint expect such reaction to my previous comment from u (it was almost an anti-climax of what i thought, especially after knowing the meaning of Ur name) but itz good for me (so that i can spam with all "ignoble" theory on ur page :P)

sidzoo (Siddharth Singh - Alleged RGer) said...

Nice post. Read it long back, but forgot to comment. And like I said, I think it's a jolly nice way to name a kid.

Also, your blog seems to be very well read. What is the secret to your success?

Enjoy.

Merin Mandanna said...

Well read? Lets see..For one,I shamelessly ping my friends when I put up a new post. And secondly, I end up having discussions like this in the comments section. :P

(Mom thanked you for taking her side! Nice way to name a kid? I'm guessing you like puzzles.)

Nikhil said...

Hey Merin...never knew you would turn up to be such a good writer! Siddharth showed me your blog just now and asked me to read it! i wasn't in the mood at all...he forced me a lot and said I'd like it for sure. I said I hate blogs so I won't...just glanced through a few lines....and lo! I just couldn't stop myself from reading it all!! Reading your name-epic...I think it's time you do some serious writing...aimed at the leading publishers in the market today! All the best! :D

Merin Mandanna said...

:D Ok,I'm on cloud infinity now and need to get my feet planted in the ground!!!

Boneywasawarriorwayayix said...

Heheh :)

Come on... Merin is not such a bad name :P
I thought it was a Christian name, but still it ain't such a bad name. I know a guy whose 'insti'-name is DCF-Dead Crow ...oh well...whatever...

Merin Mandanna said...

Yes,I've come to agree that 'Merin' isn't THAT bad a name. :)
And you're the second person mentioning the DCF. I'm guessing you're from IIT-M. :D

Vikram said...

Amazing writing. I'm glad I followed Sid's comments...
Hope there's a lot more where this came from...

Merin Mandanna said...

Why,thank you! :)

Vipul said...

good stuff... really like the emotions that come into play here...

Boneywasawarriorwayayix said...

Ah...I see Annavaru has already commented about DCF. :) Strange that we both chose the same name to illustrate. :P

Meghana Naidu said...

i read. a long time back. then i read again and again. and i still laughed as hard as i did the first time. HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!

keep entertaining please?
venomous serpent you. :D

Merin Mandanna said...

You are too good for my ego.:D
Thanks,really. :)

IrutsaK said...

I have never had so much fun reading a blog and laughed so much either as much as I did when reading this one. You have an amazing sense of humour Merr..!

Keep writing more stuff.. not just F1 na.. for people like me :P

And keep up this great spirit!

Ps- I love the name Merin ( though wouldnt name my child that.. specially after the fourheaded thingy and child sacrifice stuff :P ) hehehehe...

Love,
KP

Merin Mandanna said...

Hahaha!
Thanks a bunch, Kasturi! Made my day. :)

I sure hope to get around to writing again. :)

Prometheus said...

Try welsh for white wave...may turn out to be better than growing three extra heads!

Merin Mandanna said...

Haha. Una, is it? Sure sounds good!