pet names

nicknames (jahnavinames?)

Jul 08, 2023

this week’s Thought (singular)

perspective changes everything. for instance, heavy rain when i’m standing on my balcony is much nicer than heavy rain when i’m trying to cross the road with puddles everywhere and no umbrella and several bags and lots of traffic and fogged up glasses.

a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that their weekend plans go off without a hitch. thank you for joining us. may the rain not play spoilsport and may nobody cancel last minute.

i don’t remember exactly when i started thinking about it this way, but since then, i haven’t been able to stop. the concept of pet names is so delightful.

yes, to shorten a name is convenient, but my god, the familiarity of using a truncated name to address somebody is beautiful. there’s something about the ease and level of comfort involved (required?) in using pet names. in new friendships, where there’s a trial period, and a lot of sobriquet attempts are an endearing hit-and-a-miss. in old friendships, where their real name is an afterthought. in those in-between friendships, where their contacts are perpetually seconds away from being changed on your phone. in family, where you’re never really called anything else, where your full name is a sign that you’re in trouble, and consequently, your nickname is a sign that you’re loved.

the types of nicknames too are so fun. some are just shortened versions of the full name, with a very cute ‘oo’ or ‘ee’ at the end. some skip over the first name entirely and go straight to some version of the last. and some, my favourite kind, have absolutely nothing to do with the full name at all.

i’m going mad just thinking about the implications of having an entire mode of address dedicated to familiarity and closeness, a call just for you. i asked a close friend about the idea behind a daak naam in bengali families (a name that only family calls you), and she replied, and i quote, ‘idk we just have it’. the nonchalance, the sheer unthinking-ness of affection that it becomes a part of tradition itself…it’s mind-bogglingly tender. (she also said that the name can either be given at birth or later, that some are just random and don’t mean anything, and that i should conclude all this information with a disclaimer that she doesn’t know what she just said.)

anyway, i wish this was more coherent but really, the subtitle says ‘jahnavinames’, so what did you expect? i just had to marvel at the idea of love manifesting itself as a personalised moniker, and had a lot of word-vomit to say about it. my nicknames include janu, janz, janzoo, and other increasingly silly and lovely sounding words. what are yours?

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English Recitation Competition

Listen, Barbara Crooker

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I can’t tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves’
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals’
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

On Safety, Nadine Pinede

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The bridge
from sorrow to joy
may seem to vanish
in the flood,
but who says you
can’t join those
who cross over,
with a single
braided rope
of gratitude.

Téssera (excerpt), Nathalie Handal

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Maybe we need
to empty our souls
to find those
thinking of us
in memories we forgot,
maybe we will see
darkness healing
as ships land on pale shores,
or maybe we will fall into the sea,
forgetting that love
is a longer voyage
than life.