మీ అందరికీ రిధ తండ్రి నుండి...

ముందు ఈ టపా చదవండి
ఆ తరువాత ఈ టపా చదవండి
 
I am a li'l lazy guy in some respects one of them being calling people by thier names. Whenever I find someone with a long name, I frankly ask them how I can call them shortly. For ex: Mallikarjun becomes Malli, Sudhakar becomes Sudha, Abhishek becomes Abhi, Chandrasekhar becomes Sheki etc.

I am Naveen, father of "RIDHA". When Sarat mama had discussed about posting our debate in his blog, I took it casually until I checked this page. Thankyou all for involving/contributing your suggestions. Naming our baby is a tough job. Let me give you some idea of my context. This may help you understand why I have opted for RIDHA instead of many other alternatives.

When I had a baby girl, I wanted the name to

1. sound short and sweet

2. sound simple

3. have a simple spelling

4. have some context of a meaning/origin

5. My son - Elder to the new baby - is named ROSHAN.

Since I have a relatively long surname (10 letters) and then "REDDY" (5 letters) as middle name, I wanted my kids to have short names. I remember many times, counting no. of boxes for filling our name on diff. forms in USA.

These names sound long/complex/too heavy to me: Harshini, Jyothirmayi, Sree Harsha, Jyotsna, Bhavani,

These names sound pleasant to me: Hasini, Manasa, Hamsa, Sanvi, Navya, vennela,

These names sound too common: Rani, Kumari, Laxmi,

Now, you may get an idea of my liking towards few names and the reasons behind them. I like "light" names.

Without touching the many factors of decision on why we have shortlisted RIDHA (or its alternative spellings) among many other names, lets look into how it is best spelled vs pronounced?

How do you pronounce RADHA? While pronouncing, just change 'aa' to e'' (Not spelling wise, but pronounciation wise) and pronounce it . That's RIDHA.

If you are OK with this until now, let me share with you another point. As I looked into your comments, and started typing this response, I have realized that the real reason (culprit?) behind our debate arose from this fact. My mama Sarat gave his suggestion in telugu font రిథ in an email to me. Now, since my upbringing has been mainly in English (Central School, Australia, USA, reasonably good standard in English...etc.) I have started typing it/writing it at home in 'names shortlisting exercises' in English and ..... has been written as RIDHA.

Only while confirming/finalizing the name among ourselves, the spelling question came up. I tried RITA, RITHA, RIDA, RIDHA. I have intensionally stayed away from "rYtha" kind of names to avoid complex naming with the letter "Y". Among these, RIDHA looked better to me. The closest comparision was with RITHA, but sounded too soft. RIDHA gave some weightage to the name. I don't mean weightage as in the sense of spirutual/religion/as purohits suggest but in the true sense of boldness/weight. Try speaking out, Boomika vs Bhoomika / Deera vs Dheera / Druva vs Dhruva etc.

Bottomline: (If you are still reading this and having some fun :) )

RHYTHM is the base word for this name. Pronounce it loudly and you will see it close to RIDHAM (as in DHA), and not RITHAM (as in THA). Now, I went by the "sound" of it rather than spelling while shortening it and making a name out of it, simplified the spelling to sound like RIDHA.

OOoooohhh....Telugu lo type chesunte, baagundedhi emo... too lazy to start exploring.

Mama, enjoyed all your friends'/community's responses. Kudos to your energy levels and enthusiasm in maintaining these blogs and keeping them current and live.

Cheers,
Naveen.