Daily Times

The names of hardened criminals leave a question in my mind that why their alias is mostly strange without any collocation with the first name. The frequent use of such strange names, used as affixes, call for a linguistics analysis. Mostly the alias, used as a suffix, carries a tangible object or an organ symbol to associate it to the first name. I believe that the unusual image of the alias denoted by the crime world is to leave the names with unusual images on public mind.

Aliases such as Pahari, Mendak, Tonda, Topi and TT are used as suffixes. Most people are surprised to hear such names as they might’ve never heard them with the first name of anybody in the family ever. As per customs of our society, parents name their children with a good semantic value as children are very dear to the parents, and this cultural value is well ingrained in the Muslim society.

Unfortunately Tonda, Mandak, and Dadio do not portray any human characteristic, but rather show nonliving attributes that rank human values to any concrete object as signifier. In my opinion such suffixes are attached to the first name as mnemonics and illocutionary force.

Mnemonics is a strategy used to memorise thousand of names with their proper recognition, though such suffixes carry strong images that never fade away form the memory yet they lower the characteristic value of a person when they are called or written with the person name for his/her identification.

The unfortunate factor is that this strategy is being used to memorise the names of the political workers at the expanse of human and social values. On the other hand, these names are used to refer to illocutionary force that terrifies the people who hear such strange affixes.

Mnemonics is the process or technique that was used in ancient times as papers and disks were not invented and philosophers and scholars found it hard to inscribe thousands of words on stones or metal sheets. So Greek philosophers, Indian sages, and the Egyptian priests invented strategies to record their knowledge.

A Greek poet, Simonides, who was born in 556 BC, invented mnemonics. He used mental images and linked them to the familiar places in his house. Even Shakespeare used memory systems and he used it so comprehensively that his Globe Theater was called The Memory Theater.

Though the first organised work on modern memory systems was carried by William Strokes, his book, Memory, was published in 1888. Actually in mnemonics the weaknesses of human mind are used to our benefits as ancient scholars belied that human mind relies on known things and becomes active with mechanical thoughts.

These strategies are used to learn objects’ names and events. But humans should be kept away from this technique as human beings are rich in their characteristic values and they should be known by their personal names and identification. If people are known by their alias, it means they are taken and used as concrete objects and not regarded as human values.

On the other hand such names are not common in our society and just by listening to such tags, one can easily get terrified and consequently a strange thought builds up a perception that is certainly not positive. The unusual perception created by such names is a matter of concern. Is the purpose behind it to terrify the people or to use it as mnemonics? What is the psychology of the people who want to be called by such unusual tags?