Often, when I start a new software project, I find myself reaching out to Tamil, my mother tongue, for a name. I look to the stories of my people, our ancient poetry, and our radical modern cinema to fish out a name that sounds good. Now, this is a cardinal sin in the world of software naming. In order to be popular, projects must choose names that are intelligible to English speakers and roll off their tongues. And without a doubt, I pay a price for doing otherwise. Then, why do I do this?

To understand the answer, you must understand the socio-politics of modern day Tamil Nadu, the Tamil-speaking Indian state where I’m from. I grew up in a young nation that had only recently emerged independent from 200 years of British colonialism. I grew up in a world that told me English was the refined civilized and sophisticated language of science, technology and progress. It told me that my mother tongue was the common vulgar tongue of the unwashed masses. I kid you not, a teacher at school said that! At school, we were encouraged by the cane, by public humiliation and peer pressure to speak exclusively in English. Some schools even fined you if you dared utter a word in Tamil, and your friends would snitch on you if they caught you speaking in Tamil. Those who could not speak good English, and there were very many of those, simply stayed mum. I internalized all this very deeply, too deeply. Egged on by my social-climbing middle class parents, I spoke excellent English from a very young age, and I read countless English books as a child. In contrast, I read almost no Tamil books, was actively disgusted by it, and was even on unsure footing with my Tamil vocabulary and pronunciation. I felt a deep shame at my own heritage, and I covered it up by digging into English all the more enthusiastically. This shame remains with me. Even today after years of trying to overcome the shame, I choke up a bit every time I utter my Tamil project names in public. And it’s not just me, this shame haunts all my people as well. That is why they replace perfectly good Tamil words with English loan words, and actively shame anyone who can’t speak good English. This must stop. I must purge the shame from myself, I must purge it from my people, and the world needs to hear about it. So, that is why I name my projects in Tamil.

So, sorry everyone, for making you feel like you are wandering an IKEA store unable to remember any of the product names¹. And, sorry white people and native English speakers, decolonization means the world will have to be less English. When the whole world speaks your language, it’s hard to imagine how others, especially those with yellow irises and dark skin², might feel about it. But, please try.