Search the Community

I was hoping somebody might be able to provide me with some insight on a very odd phenomenon. Whenever one peruses the accounts of the lives of Puraatan Gursikhs, they are found to possess names like Daya, Dharam, Kharak, Bhag, Bachittar or Himmat. Good old Gurmukhi names, usually one word, one meaning. These sorts of names persisted in vogue right up until the beginning of the twentieth century. But in the latter half of the very same century, a magical formula was concocted whereby a seemingly arbitrary prefix was shoved onto the beginning of a Sikh's name, and a suffix was chosen from a selection of deeps, preets, binders, jinders and pinders, et cetera. This system has become very popular now. Old Sikh names have become quite a rarity. I don't know any Avtars or Zorawars, but I'm practically drowning in a sea of Harpreets and Bhupinders. And yet I can't remember ever having come across such a name as Harpreet or Bhupinder in all my study of Sikh Itihas pre-1900s. Is it laziness? Some parents apparently can't even be bothered to make sure their kids' names actually make sense, hence the lamentably named 'mighty lamps' (Baldeeps). Is it a lack of creativity? Or is it perhaps that the parents responsible for this phenomenon didn't know the stories about Bhai Bachittar or the names of the Panj Piaraay and the heroes of Sikh history? I ask forgiveness if I have offended anyone who happens to be a _deep or a _pinder or something, though I hope the admission that I'm in the same boat allays any outrage you might be feeling.