“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Parents have taken to naming newborns after the coronavirus, apparently unperturbed by the prospect of their children being forever associated with a deadly pandemic. Some new parents giving birth during this global pandemic want to make sure their kid never forgets it.

That’s what one couple in India just did when they named their child Sanitizer. The father, Omveer Singh, said that this was the couple’s way of contributing. “Whenever people will talk of corona, they will remember that it was sanitizer that saved them,” the proud dad told the Deccan Herald.

Sanitizer was born just days after other parents named a baby girl ‘Corona’, while another father recently announced his newborn would be named ‘Lockdown’ after he was inspired by the strict quarantine laws in India helping to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

An Indian couple says they’ve named their newborn twins Corona and Covid in an effort to put a positive spin on the deadly pandemic that is sweeping the globe. The bouncing bundles of viral joy arrived on March 27 at B.R. Ambedkar Memorial Hospital in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, according to media reports.

Two mothers in southeastern India had had similar ideas, apparently encouraged by a doctor in the hospital where their babies were delivered. One was called Corona Kumar and the other Corona Kumari.

Corona — as the Spanish word for crown — was an acceptable name for girls till the virus made it so infamous.

Not to be outdone, a migrant-worker couple in India’s northeast stranded thousands of kilometres from their home in the Western state of Rajasthan decided to name their child Lockdown.

India is under a lockdown until May 3 that has seen the suspension of transport services with strict stay-at-home orders, except for essential trips to places like markets or pharmacies, for the country’s 1.3 billion population.

“We named him Lockdown remembering all the problems we had to face during this tough time,” local media reports quoted the father Sanjay Bauri as saying.

Skylab, the United States’ first space station, was in orbit from 1973 to 1979. The re-entry on July 11, 1979, made headlines worldwide, thanks to the fact that no one knew exactly where Skylab debris would land. Just hours before re-entry, a baby boy was born in Patiala, India. He was named Skylab Singh.

Children often have to bear the brunt of their parents’ overwrought sense of history. The examples of the DMK president MK Stalin and the Meghalaya politician Adolf Lu Hitler Marak, however, show that India is tolerant when it comes to names. 🙂

I wish Corona, Covid, and Lockdown a healthy life and happy future. Sounds weird? I, of course, mean the cute little ones.