Whats in a name?

So here I am...Blogging for the first ever time! Better late than never I guess. When I racked my brains as to what my first ever blog post should be on, it didnt take me long to narrow down to that famous saying of Juliet Capulet "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Juliet rejects a name as an artificial and meaningless convention. This topic also happens to be the first ever time I spoke on stage…so all the more reason for picking this as my first blog topic.
In countries like ours, we have ceremonies running into days devoted to naming the new born. In most cases, the surname signifies the family name or the caste. Most Indonesians do not use a family name and stick to just one name while the Japanese usually do not use a middle name. In some Spanish countries, people have two last names: their mother's father's name and father's name! One has to really wonder then if these names are just labels or social identities. I for one have always been against display of one's social identity through names. It could be for the fact that I come for caste ridden country or even the fact that I use just a single word name.
However names also influence us. I had this one friend of mine with the name Shiv Sewak meaning Servant of Lord Shiva ( a Hindu God). He told me something very interesting. He was not a very religious person but the day he came to know the significance of his name, a transformation occured within him. He felt a natural attraction towards the Lord and today he is a devotee.
We have always been told never to judge a book by its cover. I have always tried to live my life that way. Sometimes a name as a social tag becomes very hard to shed and one is always viewed with some kind of bias. This is something that I have always tried to guard myself against. Allow every person to be the person she or he is actually before judging them. I am aware that my country(India) is named after a river (Indus) which flows today only in a small territory within India. Yet the change of the name does not take away the essence of the country. Whether the names have changed to Kolkatta, Mumbai, Chennai or Bengaluru, the spirit of the city has always remained the same. So the next time someone asks me why being a South-Indian I have a Punjabi sounding name, my answer to them would be "Whats In A Name?"