Why is no Telugu girl named Suryakantam?

In a lighter vein, I would like to bring to the notice of the readers one interesting issue I read in an old magazine . One Ashok Chopra, a veteran journalist and presently a freelance books columnist is a man of varied interests. He made a researching into the impact of Cinema and TV. He stumbled on a strange phenomenon which proved how minds of people are influenced by what they see. He looked up admission registers of the three-well known public schools of Delhi and Chandigarh and discovered that the last 25 years not one boy in any of the schools bore the name 'Pran'. Why?

Because the image of the actor Pran as the villain incarnate had so impressed itself on the parents' minds that they did not want to take any chances of their offspring turning out to be a bad man. I find it very hard to believe but in fact as along as Pran played his villainous roles on the screen, no Hindu boy is christened Pran . In Reality the name Pran is a very pious name, Pran means life, without that no one exists on earth, the enactment of villainous roles to perfection for three-long decades by Pran dissuaded the parents from choosing this crisp name.

The same can be said of Telugu movie character artiste , Surya Kantam'. She was one of the efficient and distinguished actresses and after her demise no actress with such a treasure of natural talent has been born in the Telugu film industry .For three decades she also enacted powerful shrew roles on the screen and carried such an impression among film goers that no one preferred the girl give the name Suryakantam' fearing that she may turn a bad mother in-law or quarreling wife .

The Name Suryakantam is in fact a very holy one ,it represents the light of the visible god 'the sun' or a beautiful flower named Suryakanta flower. Yet with the powerful enactment of villainous lady roles on screen ,parents in Telugu speaking homes shudder to name the newly born girl Suryakantam. That is the impact of cinema and the film characters on viewers. Of course in the present modern society, we need not break our heads about selection of names as the meaning of names chosen by parents cannot be understood by them nor can be prounced by the child who is given the name.