[rambling about languages again]
SO! I go by ash on the interwebs since it's a convenient shortening of my first name and a (very, very) few people use the nickname irl.
(actually, I think only one person irl has ever consistently (albeit very briefly) used ash as a nickname for me, and that was my brother when we were kids and he was going through an intense PokƩmon phase, so it doesn't count)
(do not know what to make of the fact that people don't really give me nicknames. hmm. Anyway! That's beside the point.)
Back to ash! Funny thing about ash. The sound of the 'a' in the name is not a sound used in most Indian languages. If absolutely necessary, I can transcribe it into Telugu as ą°Æą°¾ą°·ą± (yah-sh) or maybe ą°ą°·ą± (aah-sh) but both of those are only approximations of the sound. Telugu simply doesn't have a letter for the 'a' as it sounds in English.
So 'ash' isn't a sound that's used in most Indian languages. But at the same time, it's fairly common around here. Now, most nicknames I'm familiar with are either based on traits/incidents/stuff like that, or they're based on the sound of the original name. Ash, though, seems to be based on the spelling of names in English.
It's also an anglicisation, obviously. And not the only one. A friend of mine is often called Sam, for instance. Heck, just realised that I even call my brother an anglicised version of a pre-existing and common nickname for his name.
Here's the part that sends me off to have a mini personal crisis (/lh): there's this ongoing conversation about switching from the anglicised names of cities back to the unaglicised ones in my country. I've rambled before on this blog itself about how basically every single city that's been a part of my life has two names in active use - one anglicised, one not. There's museums and stuff moving away from their colonial names and taking up different names. I'm not sure I'm entirely on board with the vehement hate towards colonial names at a time when the name itself is pretty much divorced from its colonial roots in how it's perceived today, but I digress.
The point is, for a culture that's very polarised about colonial names of cities, we sure anglicise our own names a LOT and do the exact opposite.
Why are anglicised nicknames so common though? Idk. Is it because English is CoolTM or something? Or like, maybe because I am much more familiar with English than Telugu, that comes to me more naturally or something? Both? Something else? Idk. Just. Fascinating.
It really shouldn't surprise me that when different cultures meld together, it'll impact even nicknaming conventions - and yet here I am, pleasantly tickled by this discovery.
