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khandelwal / AskShashank

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What is your default nickname? #17

Open theresaanna opened 10 years ago

theresaanna commented 10 years ago

If I lived in, say, India, where there are presumably many more Shashanks than live in the US, what nickname might I use for you? You know, like how we call Michaels "Mike" and Josephs "Joe". Or is that an American thing?

theresaanna commented 10 years ago

Please tell me it's "Sha-sha".

stephanieosan commented 9 years ago

:+1:

rjmajma commented 9 years ago

Today, I called @khandelwal "bubby." He looked at me suspiciously. He then purred a bit and batted around a feather in the air.

theresaanna commented 9 years ago

Is bubby a common thing to call a cat? I call my cat bubby sometimes. I picked it up from Dan.

ascott1 commented 9 years ago

@rjmajma have you seen this picture of @khandelwal from @theresaanna's wedding?

theresaanna commented 9 years ago

Whoa that looks so much like Bug. Actual picture of Bug with a bowtie:

image

Is Shashank really my cat?

khandelwal commented 9 years ago

I am not a cat. See: https://github.com/khandelwal/AskShashank/issues/6#issuecomment-52310580.

khandelwal commented 9 years ago

Indian names do not have default nicknames. Instead, kids are assigned a nickname that is completely unrelated. Nicknames are totally understandable. If you're called Saravanabhanvanaramamurthian that's quite a mouthful. If you start calling out your kid when dinner is ready - by they time you've called him twice dinner's cold or more likely eaten by the neighbor's children. You don't get to a billion people without the neighbor having seven kids. You can't feed seven growing kids without some strategic dinner theft. That's just how it is. In any case, it's more expedient to have a shorter one or two syllable nickname.

Anyway, these nicknames are so pervasive, that I definitely have cousins whose real names I don't know. Like if one of them ended up in jail and tried to collect call me: "Sourabh Khandelwal would like you to accept this call" - I'd be all like: "Who? No, thanks. I don't know who that is. He should have used his one call on someone else. Should have called some other Indian dude." But, if they were all like "Tinnu is calling collect" - I might go bail him out. "Yeah, that's my cuz. He's stealing again? Man, I told him I'd just buy him that channa masala". Not that anyone in my family would get arrested. We're totes respectable.

I grew up in the wilds of Africa away from my any other family. I don't have a nickname. YOU FEEL ME?

You can call me Shashank.

theresaanna commented 9 years ago

:+1: :clap: