Random Thoughts of a Chronic Thinker

What’s in a name? intrigued me imme­di­ately. When I received an email from Mith, sug­gest­ing that I take a look at her August 11, 2008, post, I noted her unusual name. I have never met a per­son named “Mith” before.

And, truth be told, the sub­ject of birth names and liv­ing with them is “near and dear” to my heart, given that my par­ents orig­i­nally named me “Jane” and I hated it so much that, as soon as I was old enough to do so, I changed it to “Janie.”

Mith is a 22-year-old woman from Blore, India, whose par­ents hap­pened to be watch­ing a hindi sit­com as they con­tem­plated a name for their new­born daugh­ter.  “Mittu” was the nick­name lov­ingly bestowed upon one of the char­ac­ters.  Instantly taken by the name, her par­ents believed that a nick­name should be derived from an actual name that “matches” the nick­name and that belief served as the inspi­ra­tion for their quest to find a suit­able match.

Even­tu­ally, they set­tled on “Mithila,” the place where the God­dess Sita was born.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia,

The actions, reac­tions and instincts man­i­fested by Sita at every junc­ture in a long and ardu­ous life are deemed exem­plary. Her story, Sitayanam, is one by which every young girl in India is raised to this day. The val­ues that She enshrined and adhered to at every point in the course of a demand­ing life are the val­ues of wom­anly virtue held sacred by count­less gen­er­a­tions of Indians.

As for her birth­place, “Sita was a foundling, dis­cov­ered in a fur­row in a ploughed field, and for that rea­son is regarded as a daugh­ter of Bhudevi, the God­dess Mother Earth. She was found and adopted by Janaka, king of Mith­ila (present day Nepal) and his wife Sunayana.”

Despite her name’s noble deriva­tion, Mith writes:  “I hated my name. Most of my child­hood mem­o­ries con­sist of teach­ers mis­pro­nounc­ing my name. In front of the whole class. To resound­ing laugh­ter.”  Read­ers with unusual names or names spelled in unique ways by cre­ative par­ents will relate to Mith’s pain.

If you read “What’s in a name?” and some of Mith’s other posts, you will quickly see that Mith is a cre­ative and enter­tain­ing writer.  to learn more about Mith’s feel­ings, as well as the name her par­ents bestowed on her younger sis­ter, and her assess­ment of the monikers inflicted by famous folks upon their offspring.

Mith is hon­ored today with the Post of the Day Award!  Stop by and con­grat­u­late Mith!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Post of the Day Award, Ran­dom Thoughts of a Chronic Thinker, The Ris­ing Blogger

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