I agree with everything William Shakespeare has written except his famous line. “What is in a name?… Rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
In fact there is everything in the name; they are badges bearing information about our class, caste, and tribal origin — our customs; our fashions; our ways of behaviour. Therefore, some people pre-judge human beings on the names and so behave differently towards people. The world makes different guesswork based on certain names; for example, parents give their children heroic names and hope they will live up to it.
Secondly, we keep changing the names of places. Bombay being called Mumbai; Madras becoming Chennai; Poona being transformed into Pune; Calcutta into Kolkata, and so on; but good intentioned people oppose this name-changing, saying that it goes against the historic identity associated with a particular place.
Non-Goans make mistakes while writing the names of Goans on PAN card, bank account, Aadhaar card and other documents; such mess is due to their unawareness in spelling Goan names. This is annoyance for Goans to correct the mess these non-Goans creation in spelling our Goan names. It is said that many non-Goans are changing their original names and taking up Goan names dreaming of Acche Din to come.
There are, may be many reasons why ‘baile’ change their names like for example:
a) Perhaps, it flashes on their mind, to show the world that they are originally from Goa which carries great weight and the sound of Goan names produces self-satisfaction for them.
b) Everyone is free to change one’s name. But in this particular case, it looks like innocent flower with fraudulent or deceptive intentions to get the benefits of government schemes, job reservations which are meant only for Goans.
c) Possibly, or possibly not; due to unfriendly viewpoint of locals, they fear that Goan offices might ask them to bring original document from their native places seeing their non-Goan names, whenever they want to get any job done. So, to escape this difficulty they choose to take up Goan names.
d) Maybe or, maybe not; I don’t know; it could be, because they are ridiculed by Goans as ‘ghantis’ and they dislike it as it makes them feel inferior with that derogatory nick-name.
e) According to some ‘baile’ , sometimes, a name can exert unconscious influence over a person’s choice at the time of marriage of Goans with non-Goan name.
I always have a feeling that if Shakespeare had given a glance into our India, he would have certainly refrained from making that grand statement about ‘name’; but obviously, the Bard was blissfully unaware of what was going on secretly, inside the mind of Indians, liking for names and the impact and effect of changing names which can make or unmake the whole identity of a person, community or race. Indians changing the name of places destroys historic scent associated with a particular place; even a slight change in the spelling of a name cause an annoying smell in the minds of Goans.
