As I’ve mentioned before, I hate to see a missing month in the archive list. So, I’m recylcling an oldie that old friend, ex-colleague and long-time roommate Akru and myself came up with a couple of years ago. The current surplus of free time brought back this till-then repressed memory of a less-complicated time.

Back when we were working, and work we did, we’d find our ways to ‘productively utilize’ downtime by finding creative ways to goof around (he was the creative one, I was the goof). This was one of them. We started compiling a list of names that would be interesting for someone of a mixed religious heritage. We got the idea, of course, from Malayalam cinema which has given us such gems as Cherian Nair, Mary Thampuratty, Simon Nadar and Bilal John Kurisinkal.

The idea was that in the unlikely event that we or anyone we know would ever make a movie, we’d never be at a loss for unique names. Also, these email ids will pretty much always be available. So, without further ado, I present to you:

Unique names for children/movie characters  aka doing our part to ensure communal integration

Latheef Namboothiri
Mohammad Aravindan
Habeeb Nair
Madhavan Chacko
Shafeeque Unni
James Moideen
Kunjamina Fernandez
Pathumma George
Scaria Nair
Zulfath Warrier
Alex Potty
Alamelu Xavier
Joseph S Vaidyanathan
Shajahan Nambiar
Jason Hameed
Zubeida Samuel
Melvin Kumar
Krishnan Mathai
Palathingal Madhu Paulose
Shahid Eapen
Fathima Iyer
Sajid Pappachan
Mary Keshavan
Beeran Philip
Sufiyan Panicker
Majeed Alexander
Abhilash Koya
Ashraf Thomas
Shukkoor Thankachan
Zaheer Perumal
Imran Thomas
Raman Chandy
Avirachan Pillai
Eldho Marar
Laila Nambeesan
Steve Raghavan
Nixon Mahadevan
Tinku Namboothiri
Joji Namboothiri
Sunny Rasheed
Kareem Gopalan
Marimuthu Kochouseph
Mujeeb Pithambaran
Imran Das
Shaguftha Peter
Mandira Beevi (the Mandira Bedi of Koyilandi)
Cherian Pillai
Padmapriya Jaleel
Moosa Bhadran

This list is pretty Kerala-specific and therefore may not be very funny to non-malayalees. Unfortunately, most malayalees don’t find it very funny either. Am I really that sophomoric? Whatever. I’d love to see a pan-Indian version of this list.

Please feel free to send in any interesting ideas you may have, if you feel particularly silly today. :-)

PS: We stopped doing this list when we found out that there was a person in our company named (and I kid you not) Hamsa Ananthapadmanabhan [last name modified]. Truth stranger than fiction? Not yet. The best part: it turned out this Hamsa was a woman. Entamme!