BANGALORE: The new Chief Minister has a new name — H.D. Kumaaraswaamy. He is no longer H.D. Kumaraswamy. What's in a name one might ask, or in this case, what's in a spelling?

Friends of the Chief Minister insist that popular notions about why he wishes to spell his name differently are mere speculation. There is even a family legend that in his school records he is Kumaaraswaamy. The claim is not without substance as that is how the name is spelt and pronounced in Kannada.

But observers who go by Mr. Kumaraswamy's predilection for visiting various temples say otherwise. Would a man who performed many homas and pujas in the run-up to his mounting the Chief Minister's throne and did not enter the official residence of the Chief Minister before a Ganapathi homa was performed to ward off any lingering ill-effects, stop short of adding a few letters to his name if it means good fortune?

Unlikely, as many recent "numerologically" inspired spelling changes in the names of stars and politicians indicate. Mr. Kumaraswamy's Tamil Nadu counterpart, Jayalalithaa, changed the way she spells her name some years ago. Film stars and celebrities have sparked off a spelling-change spree that seems to trundle on, with no thought for the redundancy of vowels and consonants. Celebrity Shobhaa De added an "a" and said it has nothing to do with her stars, but she feels good, and it is her name, anyway.

The Chief Minister has not yet asked the media to spell his name as Kumaaraswaamy, but perhaps the changed name-plate outside his chambers in the Vidhana Soudha will provide the signal to go ahead and do so.

Decades ago, eminent men changed names or dropped a part of it for noble reasons. Kamaraj Nadar dropped the casteist Nadar, E.V. Ramaswamy Periyar gave up the Naicker and, in Karnataka, the foremost of the freedom fighters and Congress leaders, K.T. Bhashyam, shed the Iyengar in his name. The second Mayor of Bangalore, N. Keshava Iyengar, dropped the caste or sub-caste proclamation in his name. It was also he, as Mayor, who persuaded the proprietors of the many "Brahmanara Coffee Clubs and Tiffin Rooms" in Bangalore to shed the Brahmanara prefix.

Similarly, the former Chief Minister Kadidal Manjappa gave up the Gowda nomenclature without expecting any divine munificence or in the hope that the stars would be pleased and bestow good fortune on him.

One reason, perhaps, could be that in those days godmen and astrologers of various hues and self-styled fortune-tellers who claim the entire political pantheon as their clientele did not haunt the corridors of the Vidhana Soudha.

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