On names

A short while ago I learned from Bongo what the name “thong” means in Australia and that got me thinking about names and how contextual they are and how they have evolved in my mind. Let me take food for example, Capsicum has been replaced by green peppers, red peppers etc, lady’s finger by Okra. And peppers no longer stands for the round black things you put in pongal or molagu rasam. I have to think hard to remember what I used to call an eggplant, the word Brinjal has totally dropped out of my mind.

There used to be a time when any piece of paper whose purpose was to clean I called a tissue. Now depending on the location in my house it is present in, it has a different name, and when somebody refers to a paper napkin as tissue, I cringe. I cannot bring myself to say the word “rubber” any more. I call it the eraser, even in my mind.

What is surprising about this whole thing to me is that within a relatively short time, under complete immersion (in that to everybody else in my environment that fat purple vegetable is an eggplant), with no conscious effort, our brain adjusts and rewires so that we start thinking that way too! Adaptability thy name is the human brain?