Whether you are from the North, South, East or Western regions of India – there is a similar pattern that parents follow for naming their children – giving them God’s names (of course, not all of them do it – but most of them do it)
Many of them might not have the name directly, but if you look and introspect closely, the name will be linked to a God.
Whether it is the Goddess of wealth, Goddess of learning, the Sun, the Moon, the sky and all forms of Mother Nature – they are present in our names. The characters in the great Indian epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata feature in our names too.
Most popular girl’s names:
The popular Hindu God name for girls in India must be “Lakshmi” or the Goddess of wealth! ( Everyone in India needs her in plenty and she is dancing in many households! (including, mine! () There are different forms of Lakshmi and we name our children appropriately. Here are a few examples:
Dhanalakshmi
Veeralakshmi
Jayalakshmi
Vijayalakshmi
Mahalakshmi
Lakshmi
Santhanalakshmi
Saraswathy(Goddess of learning), Ambika(Goddes Parvati), Radha(Lord Krishna’s beloved) , Meera(devotee of Lord Krishna) are a few other girl’s names which are also God’s names.
Some popular boy’s names:
Not to be outdone, the boys have good God’s names too! The Lord Karthikeya is popular in Tamil Nadu and many children are given many forms of his names. Some of them are:
Karthikeya
Kumar
Kandaswamy
Murugan
Kumarswamy
Palaniswamy
Vadivelan
Balasubramaniam
Shanmugam
Senthilvelan
That is a long list, isn’t it? ( And it is still not the entire list…:))
There are other God’s names that are given to boys as well:
Ganesh
Shiva
Vishnu
Ayyappan
Manikandan
Spirituality does play a huge role in our lives and it is but obvious that we name our children after a God’s name. But why do we do it? This is one explanation that I have read long back – in the humdrum of daily life and when things are going well, we hardly have time to remember God. By giving our children God’s names we utter God’s name unknowingly when we are calling (or screaming! :)) out to them. This is one way of praying to God (albeit in a different way)
What do you think?
i love this interesting fact that u have given for naming the children with god’s name
Thanks! 🙂
That was quite an interesting observation and I hadn’t ever thought of the rationale but it seems to make sense. I choose a name that I liked and did not really give much thought to this matter https://akswrites.com/2018/04/26/womans-man-atozchallenge-blogchattera2z/
Interesting, isn’t it?
I’m a girl named by the lord Krishna as Khrisna