My complete name is Veturi Bhaskara Narasimha Sarma and I hate it. It is not because it is too long or not modern enough, but it’s just that my name does not easily fit into the first name, last name thing that the whole world is used to. The way Sarma is pronounced is also quite different to what it was written. In Telugu, we have a third Sa(శ) along with the regular sa and sha, which makes it perfectly logical to spell my name as Sarma(శర్మ). I never felt comfortable having the h added to my name, but the only ways in which I use my name as I please was through facebook, my blog url and my twitter handle.

Living in my home town, I never faced many problems with people getting confused by my name. I was always called Sarma in my home, at school and by my friends. I did not have any idea at that time that in Northern parts of India Sharma was a surname. Whenever I told my colleagues that my name is Sarma, they always asked what my first name is. It was difficult for me to explain them that from where I come, we don’t have these first, second and third names. Veturi is my surname, and as with most surnames from our region, it may be the name of the village that my forefathers have hailed from. But they never listened and fixed my name to be Narasimha. I was never called Narasimha by anyone till that day and suddenly everyone was addressing me and even the mails started with Narasimha. It irked me.

During my tenth class I first got my official name, one that haunts me till today. When I first saw my surname being misspelt as Veluri instead of Veturi in my hall ticket, I thought it was not a big deal. The name in the SSC hall ticket would stick to you for your lifetime unless you want to go through the hassles of changing name officially. Had I raised the concern over the spelling mistake, I would have my real surname, but as of now the surname I have, officially, is not mine.

Working for 5 years in my first company, I got slowly used to people calling me Narasimha, as irksome as it was. I relocated to Hyderabad in 2013 and my new company had a weird naming policy. They looked at my passport and felt that Bhaskara was my first name and Veluri was my last name. I told them that I was never called Bhaskar and pleaded them to have my name at least as Narasimha. But the HR girl was having none of it and I had to deal with a new name, yet again. As of today, my friends and family members call me Sarma, colleagues from my previous company call me Narasimha and I’m Bhaskar at my present work place.


So I’m not clearly fond of my name and have come to a stage that it doesn’t matter what people call me anymore. After all as the bard says, What’s In A Name.

This post is written for IndiSpire topic What's In A Name.