Hey you, can I call you that? or this?

Have you ever thought of how astute you are going to be or have been with naming your child? A neat and beautiful name (given to a child) might end up being shorten to a nick that may sound cute and sweet to loved ones BUT ridiculous to others. People may say name is just a name; how could it possibly be more hurtful than an earful of ridiculed teases? After all, life goes on and as you grow up, people become respectful of you and treat you no less than an adult. No more teases. No more calling names.

But we darn well know that in reality, names do influence our life. Some kids with weird and unusual (or unique) birth names sometimes find their names get the better of them; most common consequences are being bullied and ridiculed at school. Having known this may be inevitable, astute parents do take thorough contemplation in deciding the right names for their new-borns. The names musn't only sound sweet and nice, but also endow beautiful meanings.

There are also parents who have empowering desire in naming their children using the formula of yourname-myname-combo. Most often than not, they turned out to be beautiful ones, albeit they being meaningless.

Real pretty names that I have heard and made me think, ‘hmm…that’s nice but…’ ;
Batrisya nick-named to Battery
Mutiara nick-named to Muti (sounds Indian-like ‘murthy’)

Weird names that I have come across in my life;
Anak (anak is 'child' in Malay, hence calling your child, 'child' is weird)
Felimal (in this case the mother was a Philipino and the father Malaysian, hence a combo of ‘Fili’ from Philiphines and ‘Mal’ from M’sia)

And I have realised that people with prefixes Tengku (Tg) prefer them to be called Ku-*….* and hence you have dozens and hundreds of Kuman, Kuli, Kusam, Kumar and etc…ter-kulai den mendengornye. It is a shame that beautiful royal-descendant-Tengku names are being shortened to such negative nick-names. Why?

Check these out...

Tg Azman becomes Kuman (in Malay Kuman means bacteria)
Tg Ali or Tg Razali becomes Kuli (in Malay Kuli means slave)
Tg Samsudin becomes Kusam (in Malay Kusam means dull)
Tg Amar becomes Kumar (it’s an Indian name, hence if you are a Malay, people mistaken you for an Indian )

which if being called in full, would beautifully mean in Arabic...

Azman (means ambitious)
Shamsudin (means the sun or shine of Addin)
Amar (means to command, in charge or lead)

See what I mean? When you have beautiful and meaningful names, stick to and stand by them. Do not let people call you with silly and meaningless nick-names.… and err, do not forget to thank your parents for naming you what you are.