The piece “What's in a Name? Plenty!” the other day in these columns sent me on a revisit to the troubles and funny situations that my name have landed me in.

Though a nameless fear grips me as I do, I must nevertheless go back in history to trace the origin of my name-related woes.

My father was among five sons of my grandfather. But two of them died when they were very young, leaving the entire family grieving for long. One had the name Katchapeswar, the name of Lord Shiva from the temple city of Kanchipuram near our home town. The other was Satyamoorthy, named after the celebrated orator and freedom fighter. I happened to be the first male child born in the family after the death of my uncles. So my grandfather promptly combined both the names on me in memory of his own children. The entire family was happy as if my two uncles had reincarnated in me.

ALIVE AND KICKING

It is customary in South to have one’s father’s name as the initial. So my official name became

Duraiswami Katchapeswar Satyamoorthy. It should in fact have ended with my caste name ‘Iyer’, but my parents, influenced by the nationalist movement those days, preferred not to add the caste title in our names. (It is another story that my grandfather, in a hurry, registered my date of birth wrongly as per which I was shown as born one month prior to my father’s marriage and my father had to run from pillar to post to get it corrected later during my schooling!).

My name caused endless bother to my teachers as it occupied two lines in the attendance register and they had difficulty in pronouncing it during roll call. Hence they started calling me simply “Kacha” which obviously I didn’t relish but out of fear could not protest. Some of my school friends even today remember me as Kacha only!

As soon as I came to college I cut short my name to D.K.Satya Moorthy.

During my initial employments in the engineering field, my bosses were from Punjab and they called me “Sattha Moorthy”. Although Sattha meant Satya in Punjabi, in Tamil it meant “Noisy”, which I was not. Some others mispronounced it as “Settha” which meant “dead” while I was alive and kicking all the time!

In addition to these external tortures on my name I had an internal struggle too. I was the resident engineer at the construction project of my company and I had to manage various situations that made me resort to telling trifling and harmless lies.

But with the name Satya Moorthy, which means “the lord of truth”, I had a constant struggle with my conscience and was looking for an opportune moment to make amends.

The occasion came when I was selected by the Norwegian firm Det Norske Verita (DNV). When I found that DNV meant the Norwegian Truth, I promptly pruned my name to D.K.S. Moorthy, thereby merging the Satya with Veritas!

Over these years, I have got so much wedded to DNV that my wife, fed up with my (pre)occupation, often has a dig at me, saying that the present name Moorthy is quite appropriate for me. For, her constant nag is that I never listen to her and her entreaties draw no response from me and I might as well have been a statue – which is another meaning of Moorthy !

(The writer is a former engineer with DNV and currently a Chennai-based Accredited Auditor)

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