What's in a name? A rose by any other name is still a rose

Yeah right!!!! I am having an identity crisis. No not the kind where you ask a question "who am I?" and look for a philosophical meaning for life and our existence. But the kind where in, courtesy the babus in our governmental department and everyone else, I don't know what my name is.

Apparently, my father wanted me to be named Anupama but was steamrolled into accepting Anuradha. Hence I started my life as S Anuradha, which invariably got shortened to Anu (people love shortening names like mine, I suppose it makes their lives easy), and sometimes to Alu if my mom was in her petting-me-mood. I continued my existence thus till I was 6 when I met another Anuradha who was my best friends sister and then I became S. Anu (the S coming in as a differentiator). Around the same time, another friend’s mom thought Anuradha was not a single name but the name of two people, one person being Anu and the other being Radha. Hence I ended up being called Radha and my sister Anu. Talk about wrong assumptions (WA as my father calls it).

I waded through the rest of my years with alternations between Anu, Anuradha and Aarti (my sister’s name, generally used by people who didn’t know mine, which was a substantial population), till my sister just to get on my nerves rechristened my Ansho and she would go “aaaanshooooooooooo” till I lost my temper. Then I moved schools and the Maharashtrian who prepared my School Leaving Certificate decided to Maharashtranise my name to Anuradha N Santhanam (Santhanam being my father’s name and N stands for Narayanan, my grandfather’s name -  talk about carrying on your family’s name). 

Courtesy my name change, my “official” name became Anuradha N Santhanam and hence ended up being called Santhanam the whole of my MBA days as we had an Anupama and another Anuradha in our class. It was hilarious for others when all the three of us turned around is somebody yelled “Anu”. I shortened it to Anuradha N S once I joined work as it was too tedious to write my complete name (all of 18 letters, though not the longest in the family, my cousin takes the prize there as her name consists of 25 letters). I have been pretty happy with my name for the past 7 years till date when a software decided that Anuradha N Santhanam was not my name but Anurada N Santanam was, as my SSLC marks card carried. Now you understand my plight……… who do I turn to, to learn my real name??? Can somebody help? Or do I just respond to anyone calling any name and hope that they were calling me. After all what’s in a name? A Rose by any other name is still a Rose…

As a footnote – All the names that get shortened to Anu include – Anuradha, Anupama, Anusuya, Ananya, Anita, Anurag, Annapoorna …. To name a few.