Oudomxay – Laos, 10 November 2017

An intriguing piece of information I came across recently. There is a trend in the USA for naming baby girls “Malaysia”. It seems it’s a rapidly accelerating trend which started around 10 years ago, and in 2013 630 babies were given the name, in 2014 810.

Now, I think it’s a very pretty name, Malaysia, with all those fluid open vowels, that soft ‘m’ , that gentle ‘sh’ sound. But, I wonder… how will it be shortened? Lots of names seem to be, whether or not the parents intend it*.  May? Lacy? Layshy? Shia (maybe not, depending on her religion).

And what if little Malaysia, at some point in her life, ends up living in – Malaysia? I remember some English friends whose daughter was (rather fashionably) named India. There was no end of confusion registering for visas and schools and the like when the family moved to Mumbai. And little India used to get quite cross when people asked her name, then thought she was telling them where she lived…

*Unless the name is so short already it gets lengthened, of course. But that’s another story….

According to novelist Pico Iyer, India is the “most chattery nation on earth”. Well, I wouldn’t like to try and judge that, but the wonderful, inventive, vibrant, use of Indian English is always a delight.

In Kolkata, for example, we saw the Victoria Memorial, which according to the taxi driver is the ‘Taj Mahal’ of the city. “Taj is Raj”, he said, neatly summarising the relationships between architecture and colonial power…

Kolkata is well known for its intellectual and literary culture. We wandered, and browsed, on College Street: “College is knowledge”, our driver sagely told us.

We’d come across this glorious Indian habit of playing with rhymes before.   “I’m going shopping-whopping”, for example, or “oh, not another meeting-sheeting”.  Perhaps it’s even catching: one of the TFs, faced with a group all chattering away at once, added his own, magnificent invention: ‘Will you please just stop talking -squawking!’