Karthik's, Srinivas',Swathis's,Manjunath' s and Subramanian's

I was always in conundrum with my identity. Atleast I thought so. Born in Mumbai, brought up in Hyderabad, for almost an year now in Bangalore and a tamilian by heart and soul, the thair sadam girl in our clan I had difficulty with respect to my domicile. Au contraire I was fortunate to know people from various cities, their style of living, food culture and their stance on people from other communities.{Read the tamilians on Telugus and vice versa, The Kannadigas on Chennaities, The Iyer’s on Iyengar’s, The Reddy’s on the Brahmins so on so forth ….}
Stand in T-Nagar {Tyagaraja Nagar, a popular street(?) in Chennai famous for shopping(?)) holler out “Karthik” and trust me atleast couple of guys would turn. Any permutation, combination of the ubiquitous Karthik say Karthik Narayan,Karthik Kannan, Karthik Kumar,Karthikeyan,Karthik Giri...suffix with it or prefix with it you name it you have it. They are mushroomed as much as the malls in Bangalore. I wonder parents’ affinity for naming their child Karthik which sounds so clichéd to me now. From my kindergarten till now I have encountered umpteen people by the aforementioned name. Next in line stands ofcourse “Sriram”.

Having educated in Hyd I have many friends whose name is Srinivas{Govinda Govinda!} be it Srinivas Reddy or Srinivas Rao. Being a person very bad at remembering surnames and strangely forgetting first names aswell unless I very am acquainted{eyewitness Swathi,Priya,Venkatesh and Vinayak} I have had my share of bizarre instances with these names. I am person who believes never to address someone by their personality especially if they are very stout or dark skinned for the very thought of offending them . I have had time of my life talking to people for days and still not knowing their names correctly. I say this Prof is calling Srinivas and pat comes the question. The dark one or the one who doesn’t speak to girls or the lanky one. I innocuously say “Srinivas Roll No 562” irking the person at other end.

Not to forget “Swathi's”. Trust me when I say I have had 7 Swathi’s in my batch!! They are as common as the Krishna sweets in Chennai. This short and sweet name has often landed me in trouble for I goofed names many a time inspite of knowing them for a year and not guessing the correct full name. Imagine people betting on me to identify the person and their full name. {Heights I say}

Next comes the Manjunath's in Bangalore. Am not much knowledgable about Kannadigas but have known some people by that name for sure. Synonymous with Lord Shiva.(?)

The last in my poll is the “Subramania(m/n)’s”. Be it Venkata Subramanian, Bala Subramanian, Giri Subramanian or just Subramaniam or Subramani…. They are equally common{can’t remember anologies here.lol}.
You love it or you loathe it name surely does ring a bell reminding you of your irritating neighbour or your crush.
Any common names being missed out? Pour your suggestions .
What’s in a name you ask?

Hasta la vista folks :)