My name is a part of myself that I have always held dear. While other aspects of my identity have been fragile or uncertain, it is my name which has felt true to me, though I have never possessed just one.
When I migrated to the UK from India as a toddler, I initially had no means of verbal communication. Both English and my mother tongue, Bengali, were entirely foreign to me. By virtue of the immense regional diversity of India, I knew a few broken phrases of Kannada: a language I had picked up from my babysitter, which my parents could neither speak nor understand. Though language did not escape me entirely, I remained unable to communicate with those I needed to the most.
I remember pointing at a swan in a river near our house, perfectly enunciating the Kannada word for it. Yet, when required to speak English in social settings or Bengali at home, I was speechless.
My name was the only word which I recognised, shouted out at the end of each day of playgroup when the teacher held up our coats and called us up to come and collect them. It became all I responded to as a deeply introverted and selectively mute child, though it was not the name by which I was known to most.
“Iona” was the name my mother had given me after falling in love with the picturesque Scottish isle, and it was merely one of many others I went by. Its three syllables and elongated vowels only left the lips of those who were acquainted with a very specific version of me. Teachers, doctors, school friends, and neighbours knew this sanitised image of myself which existed only in the confines of a passport. To my family, however, it wasn’t so simple.
The unique tradition of name-giving within Bengali culture meant that my daak naam (or “nickname”) was decided at around the same time as my bhalo naam, or “good name” (legal name). Before I was even born, my father had chosen his daak naam for me: “Meghla”— the Bengali word for “cloudy”.
Despite being born on a cloudless June afternoon, Meghla stuck with me, and even made it to the name printed on my exam certificates. For the first time, a name which had existed only in the intangible frontiers of speech became a palpable reality. My daak naam was something I could hold in my hand.
Like most Bengali people, I have acquired multiple daak naam over the years, almost one from each family member. None of these bear any resemblance to my legal name. They can each be traced back to an obscure inside joke, accidental mispronunciation, or affectionately arbitrary term meaning anything from “jewel”, to “sky”, to “mirror”.
I find it beautiful that Bengali culture has such a distinctive approach to name-giving. Since these names endure in conversation rather than writing, they are inherently transient and lack the stifling permanence of a legal name. Many of my daak naam have fallen out of use, simply due to circumstance. I will never get to hear my late grandfather call me “Dutu” again, and there will be a day when my grandmother can no longer call me her precious gemstone.
There is nothing more human to me than the organic nature of these names. They are conceived from the ingenuity of the mind and subject to the frailties of the human condition. They live and die alongside a person.
It is almost ironic that speech, which once seemed so daunting to me, has been the medium in which these parts of myself have thrived the most. My name has never been restricted to the ink of a birth certificate or driving licence; it flourishes when voiced.
The challenges that come with this sense of dual personhood, bearing the cultural baggage of one’s daak naam alongside a legal name, is one which Jhumpa Lahiri discusses in her debut novel: The Namesake. The book’s protagonist grapples with the conflict between his two names, as well as the implications this has for his identity and self-expression. In navigating the struggle of assimilation alongside an intrinsic attachment to one’s heritage, Lahiri largely encapsulates the way I feel.
Though I have never been ashamed of my daak naam, the worlds in which my many names exist have been starkly distinct. I cannot remember the last time my father even uttered the name “Iona”, and I dread the idea of having to explain the intricate reasoning behind some of my daak naam to my friends.
Whether my names are governed by legal formality, or affectionate intimacy, they each occupy a definitive space within me.
I could not tell you which one of my names I resonate with the most; only that it is a privilege to exist in the voices of so many.