Bloganuary Day 21: My name and its significance

Bloganuary writing prompt

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

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My first name is “Hari”, and let’s be honest, I love my name.

It means a lot of things. It is mostly associated with the Hindu God Vishnu and his avatar Krishna. Hari is usually attributed as one of the many names of both Gods.

Additionally, the name has many meanings in Sanskrit, the most popular of which is: “Lion”.

My name has a very interesting etymology, per wikipedia:

The Sanskrit word “हरि” (Hari) is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root “*ǵʰel- to shine; to flourish; green; yellow” which also gave rise to the Persian terms zar ‘gold’, Greek khloros ‘green’, Slavic zelen ‘green’ and zolto ‘gold’, as well as the English words yellow and gold.

The same root occurs in other Sanskrit words like haridrā, ‘turmeric‘, named for its yellow color.

In Hinduism, beginning with Adi Sankara‘s commentary on the Vishnu sahasranama, hari became etymologized as derived from the verbal root hṛ “to grab, seize, steal”, in the context of Vaishnavism interpreted as “to take away or remove evil or sin”,^[2] and the name of Vishnu rendered as “he who destroys samsara“, which is the entanglement in the cycle of birth and death, along with ignorance, its cause;^[3] compare hara as a name of Shiva, translated as “seizer” or “destroyer”.

Not too long ago, when I visited Kuala Lumpur, I found a store like so!

Apaprently, “Hari Hari” is a fairly popular supermarket store in Kuala Lumpur!

It gets better though, the word “Hari” literally translates to “Day” in Malay! Which mean, the Malaysia Day is called “Hari Malaysia”!

I also found this page in the interwebs, according to which, the word “Hari” seems to have scores of definitions!

It gets better, the name “Hari” is similar to “Harry”, and I incidentally grew up with Harry Potter, so my name was often attributed to the “boy who lived” quite often. 😉

Well, what can I say, I have a very popular name. 🙂

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This post was written as part of the Bloganuary challenge of WordPress.com. Bloganuary is a month-long challenge, where bloggers are challenged to write a new blog post every day, based on a daily writing prompt. You will need a WordPress.com account to get the prompts, but you can blog on any platform of your choice – OR even journal privately. Oh btw, there is no bloganuary police – so you can pick your own prompts if you wish to!

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