A rose by any other name

WHAT’S in a name, you say?

Plenty if you consider the tale of an unemployed engineer in India who could not land a job for life or money. OK, it was more like this – all his peers had landed jobs but he hadn’t despite 40 job interviews.

He wasn’t a civil engineer but there was no doubt he was a perfectly well- mannered marine engineer. The problem with the hapless Mr Hussain lay in his first name, Saddam.

History can play cruel tricks on people especially when it’s written by the victors. At the time of the soon-to-be engineer’s birth, the Iraqi strongman was considered the Mother of all Statesmen by many people including the infant’s grandfather.

There is a moral to this tale and would-be parents would be wise to take heed. It is simply this: choose your children’s names carefully.

Let me illustrate. Say your surname is Major and you have a son. An unimaginative but careful man might have settled for such stout Anglo- Saxon first names as Philip (almost ministerial) or John (almost definitely Prime Ministerial). That way lies safety and good future employment prospects.

But even if you are the creative type, you should resist stoutly the urge to replace Philip or John with equally excellent substitutes as B Flat, F Sharp or, Heaven forbid, Drum.

That way lies scorn, public odium and surefire unemployment.

Similarly, one should avoid naming a girl child Halle especially if one’s surname is Tosis. Think of the horror awaiting the three Kapadia triplets whose rhyme-loving father named them, respectively, Simple, Dimple and Pimple.

That’s bad form, surely?

And here’s a reminder to would-be visitors to the Lion City. When one’s surname is Walker, never, ever christen your son Jay, especially in Singapore.

“I should have bee so lucky,” muttered poor Harry who was from an Anglo-Indian family in Penang and was unlucky enough to have a father with an overdeveloped sense of humour. It was no fun going through life when your family surname was Balls.

Similarly, care must be exercised in the naming of any business. A restaurant called Fay Kian Fatt might say much of the prodigious qualities of chef Fay’s alimentary canal but it says little of her prowess as a chef.

In short, we submit that the judicious application of literary licence to the naming of any trade can actually catalyse the business.

Say one is planning to invest in a final-resting-place type of business, OK, graveyard. And say it is in India but you, the businessman, want to make it nice, landscaped and well manicured.

Only one name should spring to mind. it would have to be “Indiana Bones and the Temple of Groom.”

An ancillary crematorium business could be next door – the spillover trade, as it were – calling itself “Going up in Smoke” and bearing a tagline paraphrased from the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln: “All men are cremated equal.”

To give yet another example, say you’re a developer who’s proud of the safety features of the houses you develop. All a creative fellow has to do is borrow from Arthur Conan Doyle to wit: Surelock Homes. That would surely sell in safety-conscious Malaysia, no?

Still unconvinced? How about a hairdresser called “Curl up and Dye” or a wine bar called “Planet of the Grapes.”

When I was studying in the United States, there used to a place selling sandwiches in Brooklyn called “Pita Pan.” People either did a double take or simply laughed before going in.

But I digress. We were talking of the unfortunate, if helplessly unemployed, Mr Saddam. We have good news and bad news about the indigent marine engineer. First, the good news: he’s applied to the courts to change his name.

The bad news is that the clerk of the court misspelled his choice as Barack Osama.

We remain unconvinced about his employment prospects.