Calling names

My parents' generation had a rather peculiar proclivity - that of appending professions to one's name. It was a habit that one grew up with to distinguish the million Nairs, Menons, Raghavans and Georges who circled Planet Earth. My earliest such memory is of the Honourable Pipelines Kutty, whose chief occupation, as you may possibly conjecture, was to maintain pipelines carrying crude oil in Upper Assam, where we lived. And then there was Naga Nair, a gentleman so named because of his misfortune, about fifty years ago, in being coerced to marry a Naga bride and thence spend his productive, waking moments to bringing her into the mainstream - but that's a story for another day.
I first thought that this profession-as-name habit was limited to the North East, but was mistaken. As we moved to Bangalore, there was Pesticide Radhakrishnan and Mysodet Gopinath (in the business of selling fertilizer), Vaporub Unni and Woodways Jacob (running a furniture store), Homeopathy Menon, Commander Nair and Planting Mathews. I once, at my loudest voice, bought my Dad's attention with "Dad, there's Pesticide Radhakrishnan Uncle" much to my father's amusement and my mum's embarrassment, who later admonished me. Having an inadequate appreciation of things, I then asked her if I should address this gentleman as "Pesticide Uncle" instead, upon which my mother decided that, she would let sleeping dogs - and ignorant sons - lie.

Yet, there was no better name that one given to a Mr. George Mathew, a Chartered Accountant, long since dead now. No one was really sure of his full name. Syrian Christians tend to have various combinations of George, Mathew, Abraham and Thomas, so it was agreed by all who knew him well that the best name for him would be one that incorporated them all - hence, GMAT was a born again name for the Rt Hon Mr. Mathew. He never got to know of it though, absorbed as he was, in his brief lifetime on the Planet, with racehorses and a ready wager.

This habit of profession-as-name has significantly changed, alas. Today, men with not uncommon names are known by a prefix as well: their wives' names. Hence, you have a name such as Radha Ravi, the first being the name of the wife of the latter, whose profession will always remain a mystery to the bystander in a gossip drenched conversation.
Life, as a result of this important, hiterto unheralded sociological transformation, has become just a bit more uninteresting.
This absence of spice has only been partly addressed by my dear friend Doc Verghese, the prefix for whose name is necessitated by the indisputable truth that he is Verghese Samuel, the son of Samuel Verghese.