This Village in South India Is Home to Kids with the Most Unusual Names

Aditi Jindal

Last updated: Apr 6, 2017

Did you know Sonia Gandhi often hangs out with Shah Rukh and Amitabh Bachchan? And Congress and Janata are actually best friends!

If you think i’m kidding, let me tell you – I’m not? I mean it when I say that a 3-year-old Sonia Gandhi often plays with Shah Rukh and Amitabh in the neighbourhood park. And on the first day of their school, Congress and Janata became friends. Mind-boggling, is it? But not for the people of Bhadrapur Village, who have a special fancy for naming their children after the most popular celebrities.

What’s in a Name?

A bizarre and rather funny naming ritual that started almost a decade ago by the Hakki Pikki community (a tribal community), this is just one of their many strange customs that can bewilder any city dweller visiting the village.

Almost four decades ago, this lesser-known tribe used to live in the forest. But owing to stringent hunting laws and other related practices implemented by the forest department during the 1970s, the government relocated them to urban areas such as Bhadrapur, near Bengaluru.

thats-strange — Route to Bhadrapur village in India

Located in South India, a short drive from Bengaluru, this lesser-known village is home to people named English, Coffee, Bus, Train, Military, Hotel, Dollar, Google, British, Anil Kapoor, High Court, Elizabeth and many others. It feels like they took Shakespeare’s famous adage, ‘What’s in a name?’ a little too seriously.

Ask the tribesmen what inspires them to name their children in this manner and they’d tell you it’s a combination of multiple factors from their surrounding – places they’ve visited in recent times, celebrities they admire or any new food item that they’ve tasted. So, if the parents like the Indian sweet Mysore Pak, it’s likely the child would actually be named after that!

thats-strange-mysore-pak

Did You Know?

People from the Hakki Pikki community can speak a mixture of almost 14 dialects, phew!
Another strange practice followed in the community is that here, dowry is actually given by men to the bride
Boasting of at least a hundred passport holders, people here travel a lot on business, their top destinations being Nepal, China and Tibet.

Any guesses which name will top the list of Hakki Pikki tribe this year? Modi maybe? #justsaying

Aditi Jindal

Love to write, earning for a world tour, and living on cold coffee!

Comments

Nell Rose | on 31 March 2018

I have recently done my DNA and after finding out my matches, went on to Gedmatch to find my exact countries and something called Oracle that has my dna or as similar as you can get it. And these amazing people popped up! Evidently the smaller the number the closer the match. These are 1.67 which is really close! I noticed that my dna started originally in Iran long ago, I believe these are also from that original tribe or people too.