What’s with names? Shakespeare didn’t care much for them. He said a rose would still be a rose, no matter by what name we called it. I am not so sure. It depends on when you change names. If you’ve been calling a rose a rose most of your life, but then start calling it an apple, you would confuse most people.

Sometimes the name change does work. When I was growing up, there was a country called Rhodesia. Then they changed its name to Zimbabwe. It took me a while, but now I am used to that name.

However, I don’t think that I would get used to the new name if you started calling a rose an Apple. Or Microsoft.

But names are important. I wonder when in human history people started having names. Or objects, for that matter. If prehistoric man (or woman) looked at an object, what led him (or her) to call it a stone? Or rock? Or whatever. Just wondering.

But names evolve. In the good old days, people’s names often reflected their occupations. But no more. We see Dr. Carpenter performing brain surgery. Mr. Barber could be working on your car, while Mr. Baker cuts your hair.

Iceland has an interesting custom. Names there tend to reflect paternity. Mr. Grimsson has a father whose first name is Grimur. And Isleifsdóttir suggests that the lady’s dad was Isleifur. But the last names don’t carry over. The system of hereditary surnames came from the Romans in the 10th century. At that time, the elite decided to pass on their prestige to their offspring via their surname.

And let’s not even talk about India. In some South Indian cultures, you end up with rather long names, incorporating your father’s name, and even the name of your village. How these folks squeeze this into passport forms with limited writing space is a mystery to me.

Talking of forms, I believe it takes a special genius to design them. You and I couldn’t do it. How many blank spaces they leave after a question is usually inversely proportional to the length of the answer expected. In most forms, there is a question regarding your gender. You need only an F or M in the answer. But they leave you two dozen blank spaces, while for your address, there might only be five or six blank spaces. Congress needs to get involved here.

Well, folks, I started out wanting to talk about the names of the days of the week. And look where we’ve ended up. You should have stopped me. Anyway, have you ever wondered how people named those days? Or is it just me?

Take Sunday. A nice name. Makes you feel sunny and warm all over. Except when it rains. It’s a travesty to call those days Sunday. Change it to Rainday, and switch when the sun finally shows up. And how about when the sun shows up, but doesn’t want to work very hard? I’ve seen days which are bright and sunny, but step outdoors and you nearly freeze to death. I would call that day Sun(?)day.

What about Saturday? I can understand Sunday, since the sun is a major heavenly body, and a lot of people in the old days used to worship it. There is no heavenly body called Satur. We do have a Saturn, so how about Saturnday?

Monday also sounds odd. There seems to be an “o” missing. Maybe our ancestors wanted to call it Moonday, but somebody made a typo. No spellcheck in those days!

Friday has a good name, although, again, they could have used spellcheck. Fryday is more appropriate. We have all kinds of days: Doctors day, Nurses day, etc. It’s about time somebody set aside a day when you could eat fried food to your heart’s content, with promises to diet and exercise the rest of the week.

Continuing that theme, we should rename Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. What exactly is Tues anyway? So let’s keep our focus on food, and call those days Barbecueday, Bakeday and Broilday.

Folks, this talk of food is making me hungry. I am going to declare today Fryday, and head for the kitchen.

* Shiv Harsh is a physician who lives in Asheboro with his wife. Contact: harshsk3599@gmail.com. Twitter: @SHIVHARSH1 or his blog at www.shivharsh.com.