What's in a Name

What would you be called if your parents hadn't given you a name. Something very far off from what your name is now is my guess. We go through our lives connecting names to faces and things. Without names this world would be a very different place. Often times people will have nick-names given to them and other times people chose to change their own name completely. I had the nickname "wheels" for instance when I was younger due to the fact that I was faster then most people. That nickname has died out over the years and now I am known as just Dave or David. I think that names are a very important aspect of our lives.

In Bharati Mukherjee's novel Jasmie, the main character's birth name is Jyoti. She grew up in India and then after her husband was killed she moved to America. After fleeing her country, its tradition and heritage her life changed immensely. Included in the change is her first name change of the book. Her new husband gave her the name of Jasmine, after a perfume. "He wanted to break down the Jyoti I'd been in Hasnapur and make me a new kind of woman. To break off the past, he gave me a new name: Jasmine."(P77)

Something that I found a bit odd is that Jyoti/Jasmine did not ever chose her new name. She went from Jyoti to Jasmie to Jazzy to Jase and so on. To me this involuntary name changing is quite a passive act. I felt before the she (Jyoti) was being very active by leaving her country to become a new woman but my mind has changed now. I feel that she has been running away from all of the things she does not like and with the new changes comes a new name given to her by someone else.

In the end she finds that is is not herself that needs the changing but the world. I felt like this was the first time that she was truely making a stand for herself and not letting people "push" her around. I feel that this is a very important aspect of life that a lot of people are not able to grasp. There are too many people today who are changing for other's beliefs, not for their own. Being able to take a stand for yourself and be who you want to be is something that no one should ever be able to take away from you.