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Re: Aarav
Since Aarav seemed to be likely to be a South Asian name, I googled it along with Bollywood, and immediately came up with many references to Aarav, the son of Akshay Kumar, who is one of the most popular Bollywood actors at the moment.So this seems to be the first example I'm aware of where a Bollywood "celebrity baby name" may have had an influence. Certainly some kids of Hollywood celebrities, such as Angelina Jolie's son Maddox and Eddie Murphy's daughter Bria, have sparked sudden surges in use of their names before, so it shouldn't be a surprise that people in the South Asian immigrant community can also be affected by similar publicity.
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But where did Akshay Kumar get Aarav from? In Sanskrit, it would mean either a cry (or related meanings), ultimately from the prefix A- implying closeness or limit, the root ru meaning to sound and cognate with the IE root in English raucous; or as a loan word, it could mean a person from Arabia. Does it instead perhaps mean a pleasing sound in some Indian language, I wonder.Or is this influenced by some other name (e.g. aurava), or from some other language altogether?
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You mean to say it is kind of a "Sanskrit way" of calling " an Arab." Funny...isn't it. I wonder if this helps you with something http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_the_word_'aarav'I have these thoughts of converting "California" to "Kelipoorna" (that could mean playful in Sanskrit) and stuff like that.

This message was edited 8/7/2011, 10:39 PM

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But I do not know where they got the Sanskrit meaning from. It is not in the dictionary, the halant is almost certainly incorrect, and I have never seen it used with that meaning in Sanskrit. So, I am not sure that Sanskrit meaning is correct. (Yes, changing other words to Sanskrit pronounciation is a very old habit: the Greek names of the constellations were re-pronounced in Sanskrit as I describe on my page http://tanmoy.tripod.com/naksatra.html#solar)
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