‘What's in a name?': Daak Naam confidential

Time of India

06-06-2025

She loves delving into the mundanities of pedestrian life and unveil the underlying magic that they hold, in her writings. She has dabbled effortlessly between children in her creative writing classes and her workshops for teachers. This has given her an understanding of the spectrum of human emotions that reflect in her articles. LESS ... MORE
'What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,' opines Juliet in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It's a lovely line, terribly overused, and I do beg to differ. My name means the world to me, and more than my name, it's my daak naam, my pet name, my call-of-love identity, that really seals the deal. Every Bengali worth their rosogolla has one, and it's never meant for passport use, bank transactions, or Zoom interviews. It's for kitchens echoing with love, red-floored verandahs sprinkled with rain, and that one aunt who can't pronounce your real name even if threatened with fangs of a cobra!
Others, of course, don't get it. My husband, for example, a no-nonsense man from a different cultural zone, often wonders aloud, 'Why do you people have two names? Is this a built-in catfish feature?' He finds it confusing, inefficient, and possibly suspicious. This from the same man who chants 108 names of Lord Vishnu without flinching, but thinks 'Mishtu' is the name of a dessert that's used by a sleeper cell as a possible cover-up. (To be fair, it is a dessert.)I tried explaining. 'The daak naam is not a fake ID. It's the name by which my mother refers to me, soothes me, when I'm sick. The name by which my father taps me on my back, when I make him proud. The name that unlocks my childhood.' But he still looked unconvinced, like I'd tried to sell him emotional insurance.
It's not just him. The outside world thinks our daak naams are funny. Which, fine, I'll admit, they can be. You'll find a Puchu running a bank, a Ghoton heading the research wing at ISRO, and a Tublu preparing for the UPSC interview. We've got Bappa, Buli, Monu, Khuku, and the evergreen Tinku, who may now be a cardiac surgeon in Houston but will always be Tinku when he visits Gariahat during Durga Puja.
Daak naams are not mere names. They are proper nouns filled with affection to the brim. They are musical notes. They are secret codes you never share with the world, unless it's by accident, like when your mother yells 'Tuku!' across the supermarket aisle while you're trying to appear like a functioning adult. It is a name you'll find in no official records, but etched into your childhood lunchboxes, your grandmother's letters, and the back of a now-yellowing school photo.
Take my friend, for instance. Officially, she is Anindita, elegant, respectable, capable of passing the UPSC on paper alone. But at home, she's is Bubu. Yes, Bubu. A name that sounds like a hiccup and a giggle had a baby. It's the name that still follows her like a love-sick puppy into adulthood. You may leave Calcutta, but your daak naam will cling to your soul like mustard oil on a sari. They have a tenacity of their own. Like bubble gum on shoes, they stick. Paromita once attended a formal conference where someone introduced her, very grandly, as Dr. Paromita Munshi, when a familiar voice from the back hollered, 'Oi Nontu!' The spell broke. Heads turned. Nontu? Was it a code word? A mild insult? A small furry animal? Paromita sighed. There was no point denying it. Once a Nontu, always a Nontu.
My cousin Tumpa (real name: Debarati) has it worse. She was once on a Zoom job interview when her little brother burst into the room and bellowed, 'Tumpaaaaaaaaaa, where's the achar?' The interviewer blinked. 'We'll get back to you,' they said, and they never did. Then there's my friend Jhumpi (real name: Arpita). She was at immigration in Frankfurt when the officer looked at her forms and asked, 'Who is Jhumpi? You're Arpita.' Her mother had filled out an 'emergency contact' form too honestly, where 'Aliases (if any)' featured 'Jhumpi'. The officer looked suspicious, as if she was a double agent smuggling poppy seeds and kashundi (mustard sauce).
You see, our daak naam is not just a name. It's a time-stamp. It's a giggle that refused to grow up. It's the way our identities were first shaped, not by society, but by love. It might never appear on our passports, but it travels with us, tucked in the corner of our suitcase like a jar of pickles from home. Bengali daak naams are also strangely creative, sometimes outright absurd. I know a Babla, a Ghoton, a Chhutki, a Bappa, a Papu, a Dhumdam, a Boombam and one immortal Puchku who is now a corporate lawyer in Singapore. They wear suits, speak about deep topics and use serious terms like 'synergy' in meetings, and sign emails with full names, but somewhere within, their daak naam lives on, like a reassuring hug when all else seems alien.
And don't even ask us to explain the names. There is no logic. 'Why are you called Laltu?' 'Because I was.' End of story. It's not meant to make sense. It's meant to feel warm like rice with ghee, familiar like a Rabindra sangeet on a Sunday morning.
So laugh if you must. Call us strange. Mock the name Bhombol, till the cows come home. But remember this: when the storm hits, it's Bhombol his mother will cry out for, not Bhaskar Chattopadhyay, M.A. Gold Medalist.
And that, dear Juliet, is what's really in a name.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.