What's in a name?

Silly as it seems, I am very particular about the way my name is spelt. For reasons unknown, my name has always been worded as Bineeta with an emphasis on the double “e” after the “n”. I never quite took to the idea of adopting the regular Binita like other Nepali girls who share the name with me. I say Nepali girls because Indians prefer to write theirs as Vinita, which I am not doing in a hundred years (no offence intended).

I have never really fancied my name. Not because it is a commonplace, but because I am too proud a person to think I was consigned the name merely because it went well with my brother’s own. (Speak of sibling rivalry!) When we were children and not wise enough to say good from bad, my brother and I fought countless times, over just anything under the sun. Our fights usually ending in a tussle accompanied with scathing remarks. We would try our best to hurt each other, with words if not with physical prowess. And early on in our life, my brother knew very well that nothing offended me more than being bullied into believing that I was insignificant. So he would hurl disdainful remarks at me, belittling me at every opportune moment. (I was no less violent myself. Remember, we were but just kids.) 

It was during one of those wars of words when he said he was the “big brother” who got all the new books, new toys, new shoes and uniforms and dresses… while me? I was the “younger one”, the one who had to make do with all his give-aways, the left-overs and last but the most humiliating fact that I owed my very name to him. Had his name been something else, I wouldn’t have had the privilege of being addressed the way I am today, or so he said.  “How degrading,” I thought at the time, stomping all the way to my parents, tears leaking down my face. “I want a name change,” I had demanded.  Of course, my demand went futile and it took a long while for me to come to terms with my name. But other than that I have absolutely no issues with it, save for the spelling.

Many a time people would write my name the wrong way, and over the years, I had trained myself to let go of it. I had stopped rebuking them and correcting them. So when I came to Canada about a year ago, it came as a pleasant surprise to me that I had to put absolutely zero effort to get my name spelled correctly. All because it was an alien appellation to my foreign friends and they didn’t want to run the risk of offending me. How nice of them, I thought. You must think I wouldn’t have been happier, but no, I miss my misspelt name. Binita gives me the feeling of being home among my people. But at home or away, these days, I take comfort in knowing that it’s the substance that matters and not the name you give to it like Shakespeare rightly said, “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."