Name game: (from top) Rimii, Ishaa, Suniel and Tusshar

Tusshar Kapoor and Suniel Shetty did it. Rimii (Sen) and Ishaa Kopikkar did it as well. Taking a leaf out of Bollywood, Calcutta is now catching up with the quick-fix craze of dropping a vowel or adding one, changing a syllable or a whole name altogether. All in the hope of a turnaround in fortune, fingers firmly crossed!

Over the last few years, there has been an increasing number of people in Calcutta who attribute the improvement in their lives to the fact that they changed their names. And Priyanandini (earlier Nandini) Mishra?s marital problems vanished, Bindushree (earlier Bindu) Joshi miraculously escaped an accident, Naushaba Kausar (earlier Lopamudra Ghosh) got a job after waiting for two years, and Shanaaz (earlier Shahanaz) Begum finally got married. All thanks to namology ? the science of names.

Says namologist Irshad Sheikh Iraqi: ?The name or the spelling that you use most frequently affects your life. Totally different from numerology, this is the one of the most ancient sciences. I believe, somebody?s personality can be influenced positively if logic and reason be used while naming him.?

Take the case of Tabassum Jahan. The family of this 33-year-old school teacher and social worker was having trouble for years getting a suitable groom for her. Says her brother Izhaar Ahmed, who works with the City Group: ?We had placed advertisements, went to Lucknow and Allahabad? but nothing clicked. As a last resort, we went to a namologist who changed her name from Tabassum Jahan to Tabassum Siddiqua.? Within 40 days, Izhaar?s sister got married.

Two years ago, 22-year-old Roshni Jain was designing jewellery at her Moira Street home and feeling apprehensive about her future. ?I was worried for months about carving a career out of my vocation, when I visited a namologist in Park Circus. He asked me to change the spelling of my name from Roshni to Roshnee and within a week I received my first workshop project on jewellery designing. I haven?t looked back since,? says a confident Roshnee.

Nandini Mishra, who worked with UTI Bank, was having a tough time settling down at home as well as her work place. ?I was at my wit?s end when I met my namologist. He asked me to add ?Priya? to my already existing ?Nandini? and I went ahead and became Priyanandini. And right after that, my life began to fall in place,? says the 33-year-old Golf Green resident. Similarly with Lopamudra Ghosh, an employee of Standard Chartered Bank. ?My life took on a new turn with a new job and peace of mind after I became Naushaba Kausar,? says she.