Names tell stories. They show what parents prize, what generations chase, and how society slowly changes.
At MGIMS Sevagram, I’ve been tending a simple spreadsheet since 2012, logging every student from the inaugural 1969 batch through to 2024 — 3,978 names across 55 years. I entered them myself, batch by batch, correcting misspellings and filling gaps in the records as I went, until it quietly grew into a hidden archive of our medical lineage.
One recent query cut to the heart of it: which first names appear most often? The results didn’t just yield a list — they told a quieter story of how India has changed.
For the men, Sanjay leads with 27 occurrences, followed closely by Ashok at 23, Anil and Abhishek tied at 20, and then Vijay, Sunil, Manish, and Ashish each at 19. Names a father could choose on instinct — victory, the sun, the beloved — without a committee or a consultation.
Among the women, Priyanka tops the count at 23, a fitting tally for a name meaning beloved, with Swati, Aditi, Sunita, Seema, Archana, and Anjali trailing in a graceful cluster. They roll easily off the tongue, suit a grandmother’s voice, and fit neatly on a brass nameplate.
Through the first three decades, parents leaned on the familiar — rivers, gods, virtues like strength, grace, or light — names that anchored a child to shared roots.
But then the shift came. Today, if you call out “Sanjay” in the wards, perhaps one head will turn. The once-common names have faded, replaced by ones that flicker once and vanish.
This is parental anxiety of a new kind — nothing to do with wealth or learning, everything to do with the dread of blending in.
Naming a child has become a full campaign now. It begins in the family WhatsApp group, where suggestions pour in from Pune aunties, Jersey uncles, and Sanskrit-quoting grandparents, sparking weeks of debate over names deemed too common, too dated, or too tricky for English spellers.
From there, it spills onto the internet — Sanskrit dictionaries, astrology sites, numerology charts, obscure blogs on meanings — followed by sound tests in Hindi, Marathi, and English, even imagining how a Canadian immigration officer might stumble over it, or what nicknames schoolchildren might cruelly coin.
An astrologer often intervenes at this point, at the insistence of some elder, demanding the precise syllable from the birth chart, which slims the shortlist further. After months of wrangling between families, stars, and search engines, a name emerges — unique, unmatched in the batch. The parents glow with satisfaction.
Their child will spend the rest of their life spelling it out for receptionists.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a unique name. But this shift is worth noticing — we have traded the confident, communal choices of old for anxious bids at distinction, moving from names that bind a child to a community toward names that set a child apart.
Sanjay, Priyanka, Anjali, Vijay — these were not lazy picks but assured ones, gifts of simplicity and shared belonging, easy to carry through life. Whether that reflects wisdom or just the spirit of those times, I’ll leave to you.
What I know is this: 3,978 names, 55 years, one medical college in the middle of rural Maharashtra — and the names alone tell a story that no syllabus ever taught.
The data is from the MGIMS Alumni Registry, 1969–2024.