I don’t know if Malayalees are unique in their choice of names for adults and children. When I lived in Kenya in the fifties and early sixties, there were relatively few families from Kerala and everyone knew each other within the community. But even within the relatively small community, there were some interesting variations on names. For example, my father was referred to as Allidina Joseph to differentiate him from another individual with the same name who was called Agakhan Joseph – my father worked at Allidina Visram High School and the other Joseph worked at the Agakhan School. There were two people called Thomas – and to differentiate between…