Nayan Kailash

Most people chose a name before birth, a few months in advance or even on first sight of baby. Not us. We *thought* we had it sorted but turns out we didn't. Like Naina (Riyaa), we had decided early on in the pregnancy he would have both a school name that would be easy to pronounce and spell and a house name that all our friends and family would call him by. It took us about a week after birth to find and chose the name Sarva and then another week to find the name Nayan.

Nayan (school name) was born under the star sign, Jyestha, which is apparently not a good start for me! Jyestha children are meant to have names starting with N or Y. Nayan was chosen for above reasons of simplicity. It doesn't really mean anything, quite similar that respect to Riyaa. It's spelling and sound is straightforward, which we did like. Other runner's up for official name were Yash and Naman but neither really gelled for Deepti and I.

Kailash, this was my choice. In Hinduism, the most important mountain in the Himalayas is Mt Kailash. It is the home of Shiva the creator and destroyer of the universe. At its base is a lake called Mansarovar from which the three great rivers of South Asia originate from - Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus river. We've got a couple of photos of Mt Kailash in the house now which we'd be glad to show. It's a stunning mountain, with some saying that the rock formation on one of the faces looking like the religious symbol of the swastika.

Finally Sarva. This was complicated! Deepti really wanted a name of Shiva for him as he was due to be born during a festival of Shiva. So Rudra was a name we really liked (roo-drah). However, we were advised that it wasn't a great name as it translated as "the terrible one" or "the howling". Determined, we hunted for similar names. It was hard, but the internet won. Sarva (pronounced Shar-vah) is a form of Rudra and is mentioned in several places as "The Archer" or "He who defeats the forces of darkness".

However, wonderfully, Sarva can also be pronounced as "Sar-vah" which means "Everything". So you may find Deepti and I swapping between the two.

So to surmise, he's got about four names - Nayan Kailash, Rudra, Sarva and Sharva. And a big sister that adores him (even though she keeps calling him didi, meaning elder sister, lol).

On Rakhsha Bandan (brother and sister day)