Moscow isn’t just a city in Russia. It’s also a village in Kerala, India. Communist supporters changed the village name in the 1950s.
Many babies born in the state of Kerala — especially those born during the Cold War decades — were given Soviet-inspired names as well. Some examples:
| Anastasya Brezhnev Gorbachev Gagarin Khrushchev | Lenin Natasha Pushkin Stalin Tereshkova |
One man named Gagarin was born the same year as Yuri Gagarin’s famous flight. He said “his name inspired him to a keen interest in astronomy.”
Another, named Pushkin, works as a bank employee. He said his named embarrassed him as a child:
His friends had names like Sathish, Unni and Ramesh.
“It was only later that I realised the importance of having such a name,” he says.
“None of the 25,000 in my bank has a non-Indian name. I am well known because of this name.”
Names like these are rare nowadays, but “[m]any still name their sons after Lenin.”
Source: Raman, Sunil. “Stalin and Lenins reunite in India.” BBC News 1 Nov. 2005.