I am not making this up.....honestly!

Had a little home service with a few readings yesterday to mark B's mother's cremation in England.  She died peacefully at age 93.  Decided to trip down memory lane and hauled out letters she had written over the years.  As I have said, Diamond Iris Thelma Walsh Marley-Clarke Beetles was one of the last splendid English Maharanis of the British Raj and boy, did she live it..."dahling", as she would say.

One letter contained a number of clippings; "Out of India", by Tim McGirk,  caught the eye.  It was about names Indians give their children.  Here are a few exerpts:

"June's name was not May-I-Help-You, Black Beauty or She-Satisfies-Us, some of the other names I was beginning to collect with the same avid interest that Mr. Wankhar netted his butterflies.  It turns out that June's father was an Englishman who joined the Indian Civil Service after a first in Philosophy at Oxford, and he was quite sensible about names. 

"'A name such as Latrine, said June, was probably chosen because her Khasi (tribe) parents, servants to a British couple, had heard the word mentioned frequently and liked the sound of it.  'You think Latrine sounds strange,' said June, 'there's a woman here in Shillong named Prostitute.  Prostie, for short.'

"I dread to think of what quarrels her parents must have overheard coming from the British Sahib and Memsahib's bungalow that made them think:  'That word they keep using, over and over........prostitute.  Sounds good.  Let's call our daughter that.

"The missionaries also influenced bizarre names.  Admiral Nelson, Mountbatten, Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Adolf Hitler were a few of the more notable.  Hitler was probably plucked randomly by the parents listening to BBC radio during the war.

"My favourite was the Shillong lorry driver who called his number one son First Gear.  They tend to have big families in north-east India, and First Gear was followed, inevitably, by Second Gear, Third Gear, Fourth Gear and, of course..............Neutral."

Charming.