Sorry my child, I cannot change your name

From: www.jantoo.com

I had no say in naming my daughter unlike most modern parents because I chose to offer that honor to some highly learned and incarnate Buddhist Lamas. And according to the karmic forces my daughter was named. Yangchen Tshogyal Dolkar དབྱངས་ཅན་མཚོ་རྒྱལ་སྒྲོལ་དཀར། is a decent name. But today there are so many names that are far more difficult to pronounce and by that token Yangchen Tshogyal Dolkar is not at all sophisticated.

I had to write this post – hoping some day my daughter gets to read it herself and understand my limitation and that I had no say in her name – to let her daughter know that I had to let you down with your request.

How can you change your name? But she does not understand that. She thinks it can be done like the way we change our clothes in summer. Sorry! There are some modern men who change their wives more often and realize they can’t change their names as often as they wish. Of course now thanks to Facebook Rimpochhe – people can change their names – one a day if they choose to change. But that is not the truth; it is social, I know. People change names because they want to be new – someone else – with fancy and complicated names.

It has been sometime now since my daughter started nagging my wife and I to change her name. I don’t know from where kids these days are getting these wild ideas. She does not like her name anymore. Of course when she kept on pressing us we had to lie to her. The idea that she would then belong to a new set of parents scared her dearly. In that case, she says, she would keep her name the same.

Sorry my dear child – I cannot change your name and years from now you will understand exactly why not.

P.S: There are many decisions that are irreversible and before we seal them let’s give them second thoughts because once the damage is done no amount of whitewashing can bring the desired effect. We are going through a rough time. October is near - do we really need taxes for everything?

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