Couple of months back, there was a lot of talk in my work about two of my colleagues (married couple) as they were expecting their baby in January. I had been to their home one time and I saw a long list of hand written names clipped on the refrigerator. I was cheerfully explained that those were the possible names for their expected baby. At that moment they absolutely did not have any consensus on the names whatsoever. I was very interested in this topic and so was majority of the people at work. Then finally one day I was told that they finally have agreed over a name if it’s a girl. I am not in their shoes but still I felt they were making an unnecessary fuss, what so difficult about naming your child. Maybe, in similar situation I might think otherwise but at this moment I felt this was a needless commotion. As dates started to draw closer, ultra sound test confirmed that it was a boy, all that brainstorming was a waste. After much uproar again, the expected baby boy finally got a name. Thank god naming a kid isn’t that difficult compared to naming your email address. Just imagine what would have happened to that couple, if a message pops up “sorry this name is already taken”.

I don’t know about you, but I always had problems getting a first choice name for my email. The first ever email account that I opened was hotmail and naturally I wanted my name followed by hotmail and then dot com. As you would expect, I did not get it. After using different permutations and combinations I finally settled for my name followed by number 02. When I was in school, I always had 2 as my class roll number, so I thought that was a very logical choice for my email address. I am sure everyone tries to be logical and give meaning to their email add if they don’t get the name of their first choice. And then there was trend of having multiple email accounts through different service providers, even if you don’t need them all. Adding 02 suffixes were working well to all my email addresses but yahoo, so I had to use suffix 002. Coming up with impromptu name and also try being logical can be very difficult. For a moment forget the email issues where you need to have a unique ID, one time I was in San Antonio and two of my friends (Lalit and Binaya) were trying to figure out their wireless network; and to complete the setup they had to name their wireless profile. Both guys pondered for while looking at each other and finally roosted with a name “birbahadur” which means nothing to them.

I am not digging up the graves by mentioning my failures to achieve email address of my desire, this identity crisis occurred to me once more while trying to name this blog site. I was trying to get names that could relate to the contents of the blog. I literally tried every dictionary word but it wouldn’t be unique enough. I also tried my name, it doesn’t work either. So like everyone else I tried to put logic behind the name that I would eventually use, how about the name of place you grew up?

Well, I don’t have the skills to support me but I am really craving for an email address that looks like: prajwol@prajwol.prajwol.