(Posted by Chandra)
When we started thinking of names in 2006, we mainly thought
of baby girl names. Then when we came to know that it is a boy,
we became little serious about finding names for a boy.
We always wanted to put his name from a carnatic music raga.
That triggered our search in Thyagaraja krithis and instantly
lead us to kedara raga and we both took kedaar as our first choice.
Also as the baby is due in "Kaartika Maasam" (November), naming
the baby with a Lord Shiva's name made sense.
We had to add an extra 'a' as the word kedar had some references
in latin verses with a different meaning. Neeraja always insisted
on Kedaar from there on as undisputed choice. Then we wanted to
put an attached name to it than just kedaar, that started the fun
exercise.
Neeraja did most of the searching and I get to give opinion or
rather my comments on the name. They ranged anywhere from looking
at fun side of the name to finding inner meaning and walking
away :-). We thought of many names and came to these names in the
final stages. I will tell you where these names come from to fill
our thoughts...
Kedaar
(Kedara raga has many beautiful kritis like laali laalayya laali,
Venuganaloluni gana etc., also the piligrimage kedar (in
haridwar-kedar) has lord siva in it, so it fitted nicely
everywhere)
Sachin
(One of my favorite names - someone who is just 1 year older
to me and achieved somuch in cricket. I have been following him
since he was 13, so that cetainly featured in my list obviously.
Also we found out it is also lord siva's name, so it also kept
the name on the list for long).
Tejas
(Name of Hanuman and instantly we both liked it, till one sad
day when we went to a Shopping Mall here and looked at a business
name. It had Tejas on it, it was mexican grill, on controversial
reasons, we pulled it off :-))
Kaasyap
(Based on our gothram, this made good pair with kedaar first name.
It stayed till the day the baby was born, we both liked it and
ended up keeping this as birth name based on kedaar's birth star).
Nandan
(This came and stayed with us on shortlist for long time. It
finally stayed with kedaar too. Positive points on this are,
it was signifying "son" "joyful" and vishnu same time. Stanza56
of vishnu sahasranamam had these nice rhyming and happy lines...
"aanando nandano nandah satyadharmaa trivikramah."
This line had most of the names we like. Vivekananda was one of
my favorite names, but my Brother-in-law's name being anand, we
had to skip it, so forwarded to the next name, that is nandan :-).
With Kedaar in the first word, it gave very nice meanings like
"son of siva" "siva vishnu" "joyful raga" "son of kedara raga" etc.
So it all worked out nicely with nandan, and petname nandu
pulled it up in the ranking. When we saw the athadu movie in
telugu, we thought nandu was very sweet too, the hero name in
that was nandagopal and everyone calls him nandu.
Kaustubh
(Lord Vishnu's name, Neeraja's favorite till a week before the
due date. Kedaar Kaustubh was one of her choices, but I thought
it had lots of consonants together making it hard to pronunce
for non-indians.)
Aarnav
(meaning vast Ocean, it was another good name we thought,
but had to drop it bcoz of other good names. Kedaararnav name
we considered for good time.)
Sreekar
(One of the nice names and stayed in our thoughts and shortlist
for long time. For me personally, actor ajith introduced in his
first telugu movie as Sreekar, in that there is an image where he
handsomely wore the traditional dhoti with tilakam on his
forehead, that stayed in my mind as perfect personality,
So it pushed the name up. Then reciting VishnuSahasranamam
lot of times in this period and in stanza 65
" sreedah sreesah sreenivaasah sreenidhih sreevibhaavanah
sreedharah sreekarah sreyah sreemaan-lokatrayaasrayah."
being one of the "Sa" word which is my favorite in telugu/
sanskrit alphabet, so it kept the name in the shortlist too,
but fear of people mispronuncing the "Sa" as "Sha" or "sa"
brought this down at the end.)
Siddharth
(meaning Gowtham - This name we both liked a lot, except that it
was not fitting well with kedaar and adding it was making the name
too long. Multi-talented Actor Siddarth was one of the reasons of
picking this name and also my favorite anchor from quiz show
Siddarth Basu).
Rishab
(This came on one day and stayed in the list, +point for this name
is its possible petname - rishi, but kedaar rishab was getting
heavy, and it took the axe)
Saaketh
(On the whole this name was just nice and sweet, saaketh ram or
just saaketh was nice and we both liked it. One point we thought
was, if the second one is a boy too, then we will put aniketh
and it makes nice pair with this, but was not fitting well with
kedaar and the thought of pairing the names was too dreamy)
Aniketh
(Lord Vishnu's name, with on top of the world meaning, we thought
and dropped this in no time, when we dropped saaketh.)
Bhuvan
(Somehow this name stayed in mind after lagaan and also Bhuvan/
Bhuvana are nice names in all languages. We skipped them as it
was not fitting with kedaar.)
Sreekar Teja
(One point when we were not getting good combinations with kedaar,
we thought of dropping the name and moving to this combination.
But Kedaar was very compelling, so couldn't do it.)
Sreekar Tejas
(Same with this name, mexican restaurant made us drop this name.)
Saharsh
(meaning, with happiness. We thought of this name and dropped it
after talking to local priest, who didn't express much incline on
this name)
Then the day came, the baby was born, and we had to choose the
name. We thought kaasyap or nandan to add, but took nandan,
as it gave these meanings ...
(lord siva's son)
(chandrasekhar meaning Siva, so giving him the meaning of
my son. Also, my father's name was Subbaiah - lord subrahmanya,
who is Siva's son. It all came together)
(Siva and Vishnu names in one)
(one musical raga and one characteristic)
(cute pet name - nandu, rhymes with chandu - my pet name)
(except ka in kedaar, all characters in the name corresponds to
the music note characters in - Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni)
(Kedaar Nandan - 4As, 3Ns, 2Ds - 3/4th of the spelling is
formed with just 3 repeated characters)
That took us to Kedaar Nandan. Not to complicate matters while
we are in USA, we moved Nandan to middle name. The journey was
nice, more than anything, it made us read somany sites, look at
so many nice baby faces and their names, read hindu scriptures
in sanskrit/telugu, and recited vishnu sahasranamam many times
to feel the goodness of Lord Vishnu's names.
I give the credit to Neeraja as she did most of the effort.
She thought of somany good names above shortlist ones and names
like manas, sandeep etc.). She picked the first half Kedaar and
stayed on that name persistently as her part of the name, which
I myself liked a lot. I could get to pick Nandan for second part
which we both liked it too. That's our story on how we picked this
name ... hope it will bring back memories from your own story
of choosing the baby name. For now, I get back to enjoy kedaar's
smiles in our Nandanam (house).
Happy Reading ...
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