Names and Nicknames in sKyid grong

Names that children receive from their parents reveal certain insights about a culture. For example, in many societies parents name their offspring after renowned spiritual predecessors, such as Mohammed in Islamic settings, Ibrahim or Abraham among Muslims, Jews, and Christians, Krishna in Hindu societies, and so forth. Tibetan societies are no exception. sGrol ma, a popular name given to girls, recalls the most famous of all female bodhisattvas in the Tibetan world. In areas of Tibet where rNying ma pa sectarian affiliation predominates, many people are named Pad ma or O rgyan in honor of the great saint Padmasambhava (a.k.a. Pad ma ’byung gnas, O rgyan Rinpoche). More to the point, witness today the proliferation of children born in exile who are given the name bsTan ’dzin as a tribute to bsTan ’dzin rgya mtsho, the present Dalai Lama. The following is a brief analysis of naming patterns that existed in sKyid grong during the first half of the 20th century. Admittedly, this paper represents a rather trivial contribution to Tibetan Studies. Nevertheless, the data is worthy of presentation since the literature on naming practices in Tibetan societies seems rather scant. The data in question comes from a 1958 tax register (sgo khra them gan?), a document listing all government taxpayers in sKyid grong, formerly a district-level administrative unit (rdzong) in Tibet. The document, which lists all 2844 government taxpayers in the district by name, affords a rare glimpse into naming patterns in a Tibetan society at a specified period of time (roughly the first half of the 20th century). Although the bulk of this current contribution deals with sKyid grong, I will also refer in certain instances to naming practices in neighboring Nub ri, a Tibetan enclave on the Nepal side of the border where I’ve engaged in extensive field research.