Re: The meaning; change of topic
in reply to a message by তন্ময় ভট্টাচার্য্য
I've been meaning to ask you for years, Tanmoy - what does your name mean? I've never encountered anything like it among South African Indians (who mostly arrived here as indentured labourers in the 19th century when the British Raj decided its population was interchangeable across the Empire) - they might well have mostly come from a different part of India.
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It is of Sanskrit origin: The pronominal root tad (he/she/it; it is cognate with English that) with a suffix maya denoting 'made of/from'. 'Made up of that' makes no sense in English, but it is the common word for "engrossed" or someone "concentrating on something". The word is old (appears in the post-Vedic literature, e.g., in the Upanishads), and is still in common use as a word in Bengali and Hindi. It started being used as a name in India (probably Bengal, not sure) slightly before I was born (1962), and increased in popularity since then, probably because a famous tabla-player by this name. My parents don't recall where they got tanmaYa from, but it was probably chosen patterned after the older-as-a-name cinmaYa (from cit/kit consciousness/health, originally probably bright etc.: "consisting purely of consciousness", i.e., not corporeal, but spiritual; opposite of that is mRnmaYa, from mRt, mud).
Thank you! I like the (probable) meaning of 'focused', and it seems to suit you.