Vinayak

The most interesting thing that I found in this paper by Professor Chaturvedi was that a name could be used in order to "promote" or celebrate a specific man or a specific movement. In our culture, people do name their children after children or family members of the prophet; however, naming someone after a political figure was somewhat bizarre me. At first, Professor Chaturvedi thought that the name, Vinayak, was a reference to a Hindu God Ganesh, who was known to be the remover of obstacles. This made sense to me and seemed something common that people may do. People in our culture do this in order to connect the child with religion thinking that if he/she had a religious name, then they will be stronger religious believers. I assume that the Hindu culture has the same beliefs. As the analysis continued, I saw that the naming was in order to promote the beliefs of a historical and political figure such as Savarkar. The question that I had was that when the parents of Savarkar named him, was it do to the Hindu god? or was it to represent another historical figure? Its interesting to notice the pattern of beliefs in the culture. For instance, by naming one after a religious entity, it is assumed that that person will grow up and be religious. On the other hand, if you name someone after a political figure, it does not mean that they will grow up having the same political beliefs as that figure. All in all, it is interesting to see where someone derives their name from; however, the name does not affect the beliefs of the person.