The Meaning of My Name

Pic: Shanny (Blennius pholis), a common European blenny (credit: Jane Burton — Bruce Coleman Ltd.)

A Conversation

A: What’s your name?
B: Blenure
A: What????
B: B-l-e-n-u-r-e.. Blenure
A: Unique name. What does it mean?
B: I don’t know.

Alas, this conversation gets repeated like a broken record player nearly every second day. And unfortunately for me I still do not know the meaning of my name. I know it’s a French name but the French dictionary doesn’t seem to be interested in lending a space for my name. Poor me..

My pet name happens to be Blen, its easier then Blenure and people don’t get stuck on the ‘ure’ part. Besides Blen a lot of my friends call me Blenny so thought of adding these two names to my search.

Anyway, I was supposed to do a research on the meaning of my name for ages. I did it a couple of days back and hence this post reporting the findings..

Macwyn Cardozo, my brother’s friend (who happens to be my friend too) emailed me his findings:

hey bluie,

well I am back with the thesis about ur name and its origins though its very funny and I just dont know how to go ahead. The internet hardly helped, till I just happened to meet an idiot doctor friend of mine.I asked him the meaning and he was like I have heard this word in some case.He suggested to try searching for ur name with a double nn.. and I did..Well experimenting with the endings, I stumbled on an odd result.. Blennuria means the presence of mucus in the urine...
Will continue to get more factoids, but before that U need a strong story about ur name if u happen to come across some doctor worth his salt.. :)

Take care ma'am..

MacWyn with the capital W..

Ha ha… That was a real yucky meaning..

I next went on google and typed blen.. Got a lot of acronyms & meanings some of which are listed below:

BLEN- Bobbin Lace European Network
(Hmmm… Not bad.. Lace looks good on clothes.)

BLEN- Bilingualism & Literacies Education Network which is a non-profit, forward looking, dedicated, education forum with an interest in language education and literacy in the widest sense.
(Yup, nice organization.. Anyone wanna make a donation?)

Blen Blen Blen

Artist: Machito

Type: Compilation
Styles: Cuban Jazz, Mambo, Afro-Cuban Jazz

Blen Blen Blen is a greatest-hits compilation of sorts from Machito, one of the primary leaders in the Cubop movement but largely ignored since his prime in the later Latin revivals. The arrangements are tight, with a punchy brass section taking shots throughout in the style embraced as Afro-Cuban jazz soon after. Machito and co-leader Mario Bauza lead the Afro-Cubans on a tour de force through number after number of high-energy Cuban jazz and more straightforward bits of son here and there.
(Aha! Music Album with my pet name.. Famous huh?)

Blen Corn- Wheat mixed with rye, hence blended corn.
(That’s food for thought)

blen·ny (blĕn'ē) n., pl. -nies.
Any of several widely distributed, chiefly marine fishes that are primarily of the families Blenniidae and Clinidae and have small, elongated, often scaleless bodies.
[Latin blennius, a kind of sea fish, from Greek blennos, slime, blenny.]

A genus of small (4- to 6-inch-long) freshwater and saltwater fish characterized by its lack of scales; instead, its body is covered by a mucous membrane. The blenny has a mild, white, flavorful flesh and is best served fried.
(FRIED????? Help!!!!)

The noun blenny has one meaning: small usually scaleless fishes with comb-like teeth living about rocky shores; territorial and hole-dwelling

Synonym: combtooth blenny

Eeeeeehhhhh… scary… sounds like a monster..

Anyway, I’ve saved the best for the last...

This is an excerpt from the book 'Metaphors of Mind: Conceptions of the Nature of Intelligence' By Robert J. Sternberg

Sternberg and Powell (1983 a) have presented a theory of verbal comprehension ability based on learning from context. The theory has 3 parts: contextual cues, mediating variables, and component processes of verbal learning. Context cues are hints contained in a passage that facilitate (or, in theory and sometime sin practice, impede) deciphering the meaning of an unknown word.

An example of the use of some of these cues in textual analysis might help concretize this descriptive framework. Consider the sentence, “At dawn, the blen arose on the horizon and shone brightly.” This sentence contains several external contextual cues that could facilitate one’s inferring that blen probably means sun.

“At dawn” provides a temporal cue describing when the rising of the blen occurred. “arose” provides a functional descriptive cue, describing an action that a blen could perform; “on the horizon”, provides a spatial cue describing when the arising of the blen took place. “shone” provides another functional descriptive cue, describing a sound action a blen could do; finally “brightly” provides a stative descriptive cue, describing a property (brightness) of the shining of the blen. With all of these different cues, it is no wonder most people would find it very easy to figure out that the neologism blen is a synonym for the familiar word sun.

I’ll vote for this one.. as its my all time favourite.. (especially when compared to slimy & scaleless creatures!!)

Yup, I wholeheartedly support your theory Mr. Sternberg & Mr. Powell.

I still haven’t found a concrete meaning for Blenure and so, I’m looking forward to your suggestions/comments on the meaning of my name..

In Gujju Land- Surat

Pics (clockwise): Diamond Market, Surat Highway,
Tapi River

My company is an HRO so my job profile includes traveling to places as and when we have to conduct workshops, consultation projects, etc. So, I thought why not post about my travel to places on my blog..

This May I went twice to “Gujju Land” Surat to be precise as we had to conduct an in house training for a Fortune 500 company out there. The first trip was just for 3 days so there’s nothing much to pen down (or type).. But my recent trip was for 11 days (24th May to 3rd June, 2007) so I can type a detailed entry in my blog. Here goes..

We went to Mumbai via Cool Cab on the express highway and every time I travel via this route I fall in love with it. The route is truly amazing. The roads are very well maintained and since we left on a Thursday afternoon, the roads were relatively free from traffic and we managed to reach Mumbai in a record two and a half hours.

Once in Mumbai Central we boarded the August Kranti Rajdhani Express which is a super fast express train and it took around three and a half hours to reach Surat. Since we were supposed to stay in the Company’s guest house which is located on the Surat Hazira highway, it was a 45 minutes drive from the Railway Station. The roads are very broad and traffic is well disciplined but there are a few bumps here and there and thanks to the occasional bump I managed to stay awake till we reached the guest house.

Now, a wee bit about Surat..

Surat is a port city in the Indian state of Gujarat and administrative headquarters of the Surat District. It is the second largest city in Gujarat and ninth largest in India. Surat is now India’s second cleanest city. Sometime back, Surat was ranked the No.1 city in India to earn, invest and live.

Surat has the highest number of flyovers in Gujarat. In fact most of the times I was highly amazed by our driver who would go in a zig zag fashion in and out of flyovers. But thanks to the flyovers time is greatly reduced whilst traveling.

Since Gujarat has a lot of industries, there are seldom any power cuts. This is a huge relief as the summer heat can be very irritating. (It was 42 degrees HOT but thanks to being in the AC all the time I did not feel the heat at all).

The city is largely recognized for its textile and diamond businesses. Three-quarters of the world's diamonds are cut and polished in Surat, thus it has been called the "Diamond capital of the world". So, one thing I was really looking forward during my stay there was to go shopping.

We did go shopping one evening to a place which is called the Bombay Textile Market. This place is really huge and I guess roughly there will be around more than 100-150 shops out there.

One thing I was warned about was that Surat although being world famous as an exporter of textiles, its mostly synthetic textiles which are exported. The Textile Market proved this point as most of the salwaar kameez and saris were synthetic stuff. I don’t really like synthetics and worse still I hate shiny chamkili type of clothes so I did not enter any of these shops. But there were a few shops wherein I spotted some nice bed sheets and so purchased some for my mom. I also got some shirt pieces for my dad so shopping in Surat proved to be shopping for my parents..

Believe me the prices are really rock bottom when you compare the same with places like Mumbai and Goa (roughly 1/2 to 1/4th the price) so I felt very content with the fact that I struck some really good deals shopping there.

Whilst walking through the Textile Market a sari on display in one of the shops caught my eyes.. It was in my favourite colour black (My mom hates me wearing black and I’ve tried for ages telling her black commands a powerful fashion statement. But she still doesn’t agree to this..) and had a lot of intricate work done on it. Since most of the other shop keepers were calling out prices like Rs. 500 to Rs. 1,000 for saris on display, I assumed that it would be around that price range. But when I asked the shop attendant for the price, he said it’s a little above Rs. 20,000/- I was shocked and said ta ta to him [and the sari.. he he.. ;) ] but then I guess the sari was worth that price as it was really very beautiful. One thought which crossed my mind while I was walking away from that shop & sari was that one could only guess what would be the (addition to the) cost of that sari if it were to be exported!!!

Surat is located on the banks of the river Tapi and we spent two of our evenings at the river side which was really very refreshing.

Surat is also known throughout India for its unique Surti cuisine. I got to savour some special and unique dishes of Surat which included Locho, Surti Undhiyu, Rasawala Khaman, Surti Kheer, Cold coco and Surti Ghari.

A major thought at the back of my mind which kept bugging me was that everyone had warned me that Gujarati food is very sweet & rich. In short full of calories! :( But contrary to popular belief, Surti cuisine is not as sweet as the stereotypical Gujarati food, but rather quite on the spicier side. Although its not as spicy as Maharashtrian food.. So, I had a really nice time eating food out there with a firm resolution that I’ll go on a strict diet when I return to Pune. Before you roll your eyes please note that I haven’t broken this resolution..

Overall it was a very splendid trip and I really had a lot of fun. Till I go ‘tap tap tap’ typing my next post ta ta…