Elements of Surprise

Gold is not the most expensive substance in this world. Sorry, it ain’t platinum either. Nor diamond. If you had cared to look beyond the test tubes in your chemistry lab, you’d know by now that it’s Californium. The element number 98 apparently costs $27 million per gram. But those who dug out this figure perhaps didn’t know that our planet produces just half a gram of the substance in a whole year. That’s why it costs a bomb!

Talking of elements, you must have read by now that we have four new entrants into the periodic table: Nihonium (Nihon translates to Japan), Moscovium (a nod to Moscow), Tennessine (after Tennessee), and Oganassian (homage to scientist Yuri Ogansasian). If you’re wondering when we’ll have a Delhium or Bangalorium, I’ll make your day by revealing that at least two chemical elements owe their names to Sanskrit. They are ‘Beryllium’ (from the green gem Vaidurya) and Sulphur (from Sanskrit word ‘shulbari’ meaning ‘copper’s enemy’). Bet you didn’t know that.

Actually, there’s a lot they didn’t teach us in the classroom. For example, I never knew Copper is the only element that’s naturally anti-bacterial. May be that’s why our forefathers stored water in copper jars. Another thing I didn’t know is, J and Q are the only letters missing from the periodic table.

Had our teachers got to the root of element names, we’d have probably shown as much interest as Dmitri Mendeleev and remembered the entire thingy. Anyways, it’s never too late to make a start.

To my knowledge, there are 10 elements named after places of origin. Copper, for example, is derived from Cyprus, and Scandium from Scandinavia. Nine, are an ode to heavenly bodies – Helium (Sun), Selenium (Moon), Mercury. Tellurium (Earth), Uranium (Uranus), Neptunium (Neptune), Plutonium (Pluto), Palladium (Pallas) and Cerium (Ceres). Eight get their appellations from famous scientists – Einsteinium, Bohrium, Fermium, Roentgenium, Copernicium Curium, Rutherfordium, and Nobelium.

Mythical characters have had their share too: Tantalum (Tantalus), Vanadium (Vanadis, Norse goddess of beauty), Thorium (Thor) and Titanium (Titans). Colours also had their say: Indicum (Indigo), Iodine (Violet), Rhodium (Rose) & Zirconium (Gold).

Among the quirkiest ones is Gallium. It’s a pun on the surname of the discoverer Paul Emil Lecoq. Le Coq is French for the ‘Rooster’ which happens to be ‘Gallus’ in Latin. Also his homeland was France (referred to as ‘Gallia’ by the Romans). Hope that passed your litmus test of news you can use!

China in your hand

When AT&T employee Pamela Savage coined the term ‘Smart Phone’ in 1995, little did she know that in less than 20 years, nearly 1.2 billion smartphones would be shipped annually!

The ensuing iPhone and Android revolutions have catapulted Apple and Samsung into pole positions and understandably, they’ve raced away with all the honours, thanks to a combined market share of approximately 45%. But some smarter, sleeker, and seriously cooler Chinese brands are turning the heat on, and are scorching the tarmac with sensational growth.

Being copycats par excellence, they are able to beat the Americans and Koreans with supersonic speed and super human economies of scale. Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer, was the first to spot the opportunity. Founded by a former engineer from the Chinese Army, Huawei (meaning: Chinese Achievement) is legendary for launching the copy, weeks before the original can hit the racks!

Xiaomi (pronounced shee-ow-me) is the other brand that’s making waves. The Beijing-based electronics company got into the business of smartphones in August 2011 and by 2014, the company had sold a mindboggling 60 million smartphones. To put that number in perspective, Xiaomi sold 12 times more phones than Micromax!

Xiaomi, interestingly, is the Chinese word for ‘millets’ (the English equivalent of Bajra). Apparently the inspiration for it was the Buddhist philosophy of doing big things, grain by grain. The odd name, gave another Chinese brand Meizu a golden marketing opportunity. They distributed free millets with their phones and claimed, “Xiaomi now free with every Meizu phone!” Cheeky, no?

The success of Xiaomi has spawned many more Chinese brands and they are all pouring into India. Gionee was among the first to set up shop with their Elife series. For the curious-minded, Gionee, supposedly, is an anglicised form of Chinese ‘Jin Li’ and it means ‘Golden & Beautiful’. Zopo (acronym for Zealous Open Perfect Outstanding) has thrown in its hat too - perhaps following the footsteps of Oppo (short for ‘opportunity), a mobile brand that’s been quite visible in the national media.

OnePlusTwo, the phone that sounds like a student who’s flunked his 12th board exam, is the hot cake Chinese mobile that’s getting heaps of fan-following in our metros, largely due to their innovative strategy of phones-by-invitation-only. OnePlusTwo is from a company named OnePlus (speculated to be a secret subsidiary of Oppo). Another big player is Vivo (Latin for ‘alive). You’ll get to hear a lot about them as they’ve snagged the IPL title rights for two years. With so many brands jostling for space, it’ll be interesting to see who wins the Chinese checkers!

Losing My Religion

Friedrich Nietzsche, the poster boy of atheists, once trenchantly quipped, “After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.” Such was the high regard, the German philosopher had for the concept of the almighty. Coming from someone who was nicknamed ’the little pastor’ in his schooldays for his prowess in effortless recital of Biblical verses, it’s indeed ironical.

But irony has been a recurring theme with non-believers. Take Periyar, the respected Tamil rationalist. He was born as EV Ramasamy Naicker and all his life he railed against Rama the Swami and Ramayan the epic. Kamal Hassan, the outspoken thespian and atheist, did his schooling – of all the secular places - in Hindu Higher Secondary School! Even his name in Sanskrit means ‘Beholder of the Lotus’ which in turn is a sobriquet for Lord Vishnu. One must add here though that the official story is that he was named after his dad’s friend Yakoob Hassan as a tribute to the protection he offered his father during his prison days.

Christopher Hitchens, the celebrated British author, who felt ‘antitheist’ describes him better than the limp ‘atheist’, did nothing to change his first name which literally means ‘bearing Christ’. Sam Harris, the other famed irreligionist, also carries the cross of a religious first name. For the uninformed, Sam is the diminutive for Samuel, the Hebrew word that signifies ‘name of god’.

To eliminate this apparent irony, atheists have started adopting names with zero religious connotations. Numbers are sometimes favoured – especially the Greek ones like Primus (one) and Quintus (five). God names are being dumped in favour of first names of famous iconoclasts – Charles (Darwin), Karl (Marx), Richard (Dawkins) and Bertrand (Russell) are in vogue now. If it’s a baby girl, parents prefer neutral floral or colour names. Something like - Rose, Daisy, Violet, Camelia, Iris, or Turquoise.

Month names come in handy too. March, April, May, June, July and August are quite popular. Verbs are very much in circulation. Stuff such as Hope, Rock, Sparkle, Mark, Hunt and Glow. Sometimes science provides the fodder: Tesla, Quark, Lumen, Gene, Lycra, Curie, Symmetry, Benzene, Hawking, and Newton. Some dive into comic books to fish out pearls (Flash, Kal El, Tarzan, Jughead, Charlie Brown). And the wacko types who don’t mind spoofing religions choose Saint Stupid, Pastafarian, Alwarpettai Aandava, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Beefbiter, Invisible Pink Unicorn, Ceiling Cat, Sub Genuis and things that will make you go, ‘Oh my god!’

Epic Discoveries

I suspect every one of us thinks that we have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of our epics. Having been weaned on a healthy junk-food diet of Amar Chitra Katha, Ramanand Sagar, and BR Chopra, it’s quite normal to exude the cocky demeanour of a Kapil Sibal, every time one is posed a question on Indian mythology.

But let me assure you, we know precious little. I came face to face with my level of ignorance, when a little one stumped me with an innocuous poser: Why is Rama called ‘Rama’? After blathering my way out of the situation, I consulted a musty old Sanskrit dictionary. And I unearthed very many things that no one told me before.

Rama, as it turns out, has many meanings. ‘Harbinger of happiness’ is the one, many latch on to. But it also cues ‘dark complexioned’ – which is probably why he was depicted blue in the comic strips. Incidentally, Krishna is also synonymous with ‘dusky’ skin. So all you ‘fair and lovely’ folks, it’s time you gave us sooty beauties more respect!

Sita is the ‘trench made in the land while ploughing’ and it seems she emerged from a furrow when her dad Janaka was tilling his farm. Some of you might have already known that. But I am not sure if you know how Surpanaka got her name. It seems her nails resembled the winnowing fan at birth. That’s how!

Turning to Mahabharata, do you know Karna is literally the ‘ear’? The story goes that Kunti gave birth to her first son through her ear to avoid losing her virginity. May be that’s how we got the expression ‘playing it by the ear’! To just complete the dots in your head, Kumbhakarna, by the same logic, means ‘pot-eared’.

The ever-scheming Shakuni is curiously named after the hen-sparrow. Now you can get your head around the bizarre band name ‘Shakuni & the Birds of Prey’. Continuing on skin tones, Arjuna is supposed to be ‘white and clear’ or as some say ‘silver’. And Pandu, ‘pale yellow’.

Talking of Pandavas, Yudishtra is ‘firm in battle’, Bheem is predictably ‘formidable’, Sahadeva is ‘like the gods’ and Nakula means ‘mongoose’ apart from the politically correct explanation: ‘handsome in the lineage’.

And by the way, the real zingers are Kamsa (‘cup’), Vyasa (‘diameter of a circle’), Ashvathama (‘horse power’), and Kubera (‘deformed one’). The most surprising interpretation I came across involved Kashyapa. It seems the word meant ‘black-teeth’. That scrap of trivia made me want to brush up my folklore all over again!

Need for Swede

There’s a lot we don’t know about Sweden. Bet you didn’t know that moms and dads over there enjoy a baby break of 16 months which includes 2 months for the dad, all while taking home 77.6% of the salary.

Here’s another one. It’s mandatory for companies to offer at least one massage a month as perk. If you couldn’t believe your eyes, sample this: Income tax rates are rather high but people pay up gladly as college education is free and healthcare is virtually free!

The Swedes are indeed full of surprises. Apart from gifting us the greatest pop band (ABBA) and the finest tennis player (Bjorn Borg), the Scandinavians were also the earliest in framing naming laws. The Names Adoption Act of 1901 banished the established practice of affixing the father’s first name to new-borns and replaced it with the concept of family names, thereby bringing relief to thousands of babies of unknown parentage.

From a nation of Ericssons and Anderssons, people were empowered to choose surnames that were more descriptive of the family, ranging from topographic names like Soderberg (meaning: ‘from the south mountain’), Edberg (‘from the isthmus mountain’), and Lindberg (from the ‘lime tree mountain’) to pedigreed noble names like Hammarksjold (from the folks with the ‘hammershield’ insignia).

But with time, a nosy bureaucracy took over and used an updated version of the law to act as name inspectors who decide how children are named in Sweden. Consequently, a couple were denied the right to name their son as ‘Q’ citing failure to satisfy ‘basic linguistic requirements’.

Diana Ring had a similar experience when she baptized her child as ‘Token’. The Tax Authority (believe it or not, they decide names!) summarily rejected it on account of being ‘offensive’. Kasim Mats’ case is weirder. When his parents applied for a name change to Kasim Von, it was declared ‘inappropriate’ because ‘Von’ was seen as an aristocratic name not meant for commoners!

But parents are not giving up. They are going to court to get the matter sorted. When Michael and Karolina Tomaro were prevented from calling their infant ‘Metallica’, they took to legal recourse to challenge the move and were successful in rocking the veto. ‘Lego’ has been taken off the banned list too, thanks to a colourful court intervention.

These gaffes apart, the Swedes have been liberal enough to clear ‘Google’ for a search engineer father. So, it might still be worth it to make babies in Stockholm.

Numbers by the dozen

With one stroke of mathematical ingenuity, an unsung Doordarshan newscaster took revenge on the Chinese President Xi Jinping for all the unwarranted incursions at the border by referring to him as ‘Eleven Jinping’. And for her serendipitous act of bravery, the anchor was packed off to the doghouse instead of being awarded a Shaurya Chakra. Poor thing!

Perhaps the mandarins at Doordarshan are not aware of the great Indian tradition of embedding numbers in names. Had they known about it, at least we could have trotted out a face saving explanation that the blooper was not an insult but an honorific.

Because it’s quite common in our country for names to be woven around numerals. Eknath Solkar, India’s best ever fielder, bore the Shaivite appellation Eknath (meaning: one lord). BJP’s proto economist Jay Dubashi’s surname alludes to a person who is an exponent of two languages. Renowned percussionist Trilok Gurtu used to proudly tell people that his first name meant ‘king of three worlds’.

Just to complete the count-up: Chaturvedi is one who knows the four vedas; Panchapakesan is the god who has five rivers trapped in his hair; Arumugam is the six-faced deity; Ezhumalai is the master who resides in the seven hills; Ashtalakshmi is the lady with the gunas of eight goddesses; Navarajan is the ruler of nine planets; and Dasaratha is the man whose chariot can move in ten directions!

If Mr. Jinping needs international examples to be assuaged, there’s plenty. The Quentin in Quentin Tarantino actually means ‘fifth born’. Similarly, Octavio in Octavio Paz is the Spanish way of saying ‘eighth’.

Since the entire controversy started with Roman numerals, the curious case study of Beyonce’s baby girl ‘Blue Ivy Carter’ should keep the Chinese happy. Ivy on the face of it is a beautiful vine. But there’s more to it. Phonetically it’s the letters I and V. When put together, that’s IV. To those who think like the Doordarshan woman it’s the roman number ‘four’. And what’s with the four fetish? Apparently Beyonce and her hubby Jay-Z were both born on the 4th. What’s more, they got hitched on April 4th. To commemorate the date, they chose the quaint middle name.

So Eleven Jinping is in ‘bootylicious’ company. Next time he says ‘Ni hao’, pull that number on him.

Best Names of 2013

Mediocrity is easily the most infectious disease in the world. The reason no one talks about it is because it’s so commonplace that our eyes and ears stopped taking note long, long ago. Which is why the mind sends 99.99% of the things it sees into the recycle bin folder and stores only the truly remarkable.

Names are no different. Much of what is created is muck. A select few, however, shimmer through like a distant star in an ocean of darkness. We’ve got to celebrate the brilliant ones or else, we’ll be encircled by a sea of ordinariness.

Douglas Coupland’s satirical novel ‘Worst.Person.Ever’ is a twinkling example of genius nomenclature. The title will beguile you into reading the book whether you’re in a bordello, bathroom, or bookstore. I can’t think of any other tome with an equally arresting name.

Among Hollywood movies, three titles caught my fancy: ‘Sharknado’, ‘Blue Is The Warmest Colour’ and ‘John Dies at the End’. While I liked the fresh bite of the shark flick, I loved the audacity of the deliberate ploy to reveal the plot with ‘John Dies’. Why would they do that? The itch to solve the puzzle would make anyone take the DVD home. And that’s what great film titles do.

The mesmeric cadence of ‘Matru Ki Bijli Ka Mandola’ and the overt projection of cheeky protagonists with ‘Kedi Billa Killadi Ranga’ also appealed to my senses.

Relatively speaking, bands didn’t have such a good year. I had to really dive deep to fish out a few pearls from among the new kids on the block. ‘Diarrhea Planet’, the Nashville-based rock and roll band that dreams of being the worst group ever, won the sweepstakes for the most oustanding name by besting the proudly uncool hip-hop duo ‘The Underachievers’.

The celeb baby name of the year, in my book, is Shakira’s ‘Milan’. Her nod to the Italian fashion capital sounds way hipper than Kim Kardashian’s baffling choice, ‘North West’.

And finally, ‘The Brand of 2013’ is, without a peg of doubt: ‘Oddka Vodka’, the spirited drink from Wyborowa Company in bizarre flavours such as Caramel Popcorn, Fresh Cut Grass, Apple Pie and even Electricity! With a name like Oddka, your year is bound to end on a guaranteed high, doncha’ think?

A more detailed list of nominees here. 

The Sixty Fifth Square

There are not too many people who respect chess players. Consider this: after the fourth move on a chess board, more than 288 billion positions are possible. That’s as many as the total number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy! For a mind to see through these many permutations and combinations, you either need to be Vishy Anand or Magnus Carlsen. So they deserve at least 22 yards of more adoration than your over hyped master blasters.

Now that we’ve drawn your attention to the duo battling for the FIDE world chess championship, it’s perhaps the right moment to reflect on what it takes to be the king of kings. It’s certainly not skill. Vishy and Magnus have oodles of it. It can’t be knowledge as both players have access to more information than Deep Blue or Deep Thought. Experience, obviously cannot be the telling difference, as Anand is learning it the hard way.

So what is the X-factor that decides who will wear the crown? I have a theory. I call it the 65th square. And it’s got a lot to do with the names of the players.

Allow me to amplify my thoughts. The chess world has always been dominated by people with names that have a direct link to the game. The champion from 1921 to 1927 was Jose Raul Capablanca. His Spanish name translates to ‘Powerful god with the white cape’. The key words of note are ‘white’ and ‘power’. Bobby Fischer (considered by many to be the greatest chess player) literally works out to ‘the fisherman who will shine’. His legendary track record of fame corroborates the name meaning.

Garry Kasparov decodes to ‘speared wiseman’. Veselin Topalov aka ‘cheerful rook’ has an even closer connection. Likewise Vladimir Kramnik is ‘the shopkeeper ruler’, Ruslan Ponomariov is ‘Lion of the Sea’, Rustam Kasimdhzanov is ‘generous warrior’, Alexander Khalifman is ‘the defender who leads’, Boris Gelfand is ‘fighter elephant’ and Vasily Ivanchuk, ‘the king who believes’!

Going by this, Viswanathan Anand (‘blissful lord of the universe’) holds a significant advantage over Magnus Carlsen (‘the great independent man’). Only time will tell if that's good enough to checkmate the Norwegian Harry Potter.

A Quantum of Boredom

I was always under the erroneous impression that lawyers wrote the most unreadable prose. After browsing through hundreds of articles spewing mumbo jumbo on the Higgs Boson, I am convinced that this befitting accolade should be reserved for theoretical physicists, because they have this incredible gift of transforming the infinitely interesting to the most infinitesimally insipid things.

Analyse the ‘The God Particle’ kerfuffle to draw your own conclusions. Here was a conceptual particle that put the bang into the big bang and made the earth, the moon and everything around us, possible. And what do our physicists call this wonder particle? The oh-so-boring ‘Higgs Boson’. That’s like christening ‘Mozart’ as ‘Square Root 2’. Can’t get more sterile, right?

That’s the problem with the scientific community. In their anxiety to appear ruthlessly objective, coldly factual and dispassionately logical, they tend to lose the soul of their concept when they assign names to their ideas.

Just examine ‘The Standard Model’ of particle physics. Supposedly the grand theory that summates the building blocks of the universe. It doesn’t get bigger than this. And yet, they choose an utterly uninspiring assembly-line name like ‘Standard Model’. Surely the minds that can conjure up a beautiful experiment like the Large Hadron Collider can do better.

Sadly, sleep inducing names have always been a constant in the exciting history of particle physics. Except for the one rare leap of imagination when Murray Gell-Mann borrowed a whimsical sound he liked from James Joyce’s poem ‘Three Quarks for Muster Mark’, physicists have always preferred to hide behind the most yawn-worthy names.

The fundamental particle ‘Lepton’ was named after the Greek word for ‘fine or small’. ‘Baryon’, the composite particle made of three quarks, was derived from ‘Barys’ or ‘heavy’. The intermediate mass ‘Meson’ was called so, as ‘meso’ means ‘mid’. While the ‘Hadron’ was considered appropriate as ‘hadros’ cued ‘thick’ and the composite particle existed due to a strong force.

Add Muon, Electron, Gluon, Tachyon and Proton to the list and you’ll realise that all it takes to whip up something subatomic is a literal Greek word and the –on suffix. Makes you wonder if the next groundbreaking discovery is going to be a ‘Moron’!

The Circuit of Sidekicks

Life as a sidekick can be seriously depressing. You have to walk and talk like a retard to make the hero look smarter. You have to wear uncool clothing to make the star look hipper. You have to be the joke to generate the laughs. What’s worse, you don’t even get to serenade bimbos. A smack here. A whack there. A punch here. A punchline there. That’s all you get. And just when you’re warming up to be the scene stealer, you’re rudely cut out of the frame to make way for a corny climax.

So, that my friend, has been the zakhmi kahaani of sidekicks in Indian flicks. You get a miserly 15 minutes of screen time to make a deep impression. Given the blink-and-miss nature of the appearances, film makers today, are working harder to make these minor characters far more unforgettable.

Opting for wacky sidekick names is a great safety net to ensure memorability. Astute auteurs like Raju Hirani are increasingly turning to quirky names for injecting some added mirth into their sub-plots. The eminently likeable 'Circuit' in the Munnabhai series gave him a wee bit of leeway for the now-famous ‘Short-Circuit’ gag. He repeated that trick by inventing the ‘Virus’ and ‘Millimetre’ characters in ‘3 Idiots’.

Mr. Hirani needs to doff his hat to Shekar Kapoor’s ‘Mr. India’ for hitting upon the winning formula. For those of you who remember the charming Sri Devi-Anil Kapoor blockbuster, actor Satish Kaushik played the role of ‘Calendar’ in that film.

Shekar’s innovation was mimicked big time in the nineties by the David Dhawan generation. You had Johnny Lever playing ‘Hitchcock’ in ‘Aao Wish Karein’, ‘Taxi’ in ‘Farz’, ‘Screwdriver’ in Ghaath, ‘Okay’ in ‘Deewane’ and ‘Maggi’ in ‘Tera Jadoo Chal Gaya’.

You might have forgotten the horrendous ‘International Khiladi’ but you’ll never forget the fact that Johnny Lever played Twinkle Khanna’s photographer sidekick in the movie. And he was aptly called: ‘Focus’.

Comedian Santhanam is attempting to apply this template to Tamil Cinema. His ‘Kaatuppoochi’ in ‘Siruthai’, ‘Delhi’ in ‘Vandhaan Vendraan’ and ‘Speedu’ in Velayudham are steps in that direction. It remains to be seen if this name humour thingy will continue to tickle the funny bone.

Solpa Yeddy, Solpa Gowda.

Sometime in the late seventies, when Indira Gandhi had pressed the ‘Emergency’ button, she air dashed to Chennai with our acting president Basappa Danappa Jatti. A mischievous Tamil tabloid put out an almost blasphemous headline to commemorate the event: Indira Gandhi Jatti Udan Vandaar! All of Madras was in splits as jatti meant underwear in the local lingo. And the line could be interpreted as ‘Indira Arrives In Her Undies!’

Some might find this distasteful. But I found it amusing. In a funny sort of way, the anecdote piqued my curiosity to learn more about Kannadiga names. So when I got down to researching the subject, I discovered that large sections of Karnataka use the PFN template for naming their children - P standing for Personal Name, F for Father’s and N for Native place. By this logic Jatti must be an ancestral town and not some local inner wear, made in Tirupur.

I also noticed that in a few cases the PFN formula might get flipped and become NFP. Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa is an exemplification of this format. As in, Bookanakare is the native place, Siddalingappa - his dad’s, and Yeddyurappa is his given name, which in turn, is a nod to a temple deity in Yadiyur, a town in Tumkur. Somanahalli Malliah Krishna (SM Krishna) is yet another NFP beneficiary.

But ‘What about Gowda?’ you may ask. Well, like many surnames in this part of the country, it has a fairly rural ancestry. Gowda is said to have been derived from the archaic Dravidian word Kavundan (meaning: village head). Incidentally, the Tamil Gounder has the same root.

If we turn our gaze to some other popular surnames, lots of insights can be gleaned. Hegde (head of fort), Baliga (soldier with spear), Shenoy (captain), Nayak (commander) and Havaldar (Sergeant) owe their origins to medieval military terms. While Kamath (works on soil), Bhatt (priest), Shroff (money changer), Javali (clothes dealer), and Shetty (Chettiar or Seth) typify the occupation of the tribes. And the very Coorgi Ponappa (gold), Cariappa (black), Nanjappa (wetland), Nagappa (snake) and Chinnappa (small) feel fairly descriptive in nature. Wonder, how they got their Nameappa!