What's in a name? Pondered the Bard of Avon. What William Shakespeare didn't realize was that a name has a huge effect on it, especially when it involves politicians in South India.

Perhaps strange is the new normal when it comes to names.

Humans in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area have a unique custom of naming their children after physical objects (household appliances and gadgets) rather than people. As a result, you have children named Balti (bucket), Glass, and Cooker. Also, there is a boy named Pepsi.

According to a Pakistani daily, humans are known as Number-One, Mobile, Radio, Cassette, and Akhbar (newspaper). To paraphrase an old Abba song, it's the game of the name.

Some English names are also unusual, albeit their unusualness may have faded with repeated usage. Winterbottom, Sidebottom, Gladstone, Oldman, Young, Redgrave, Makepeace (the middle name of a well-known novelist), Styles, Stork, Winehouse, and also the quite odd-sounding and risqué Balls are among your surnames.

Many are named after flowers (Rose, Hyacinth, Daisy, Jasmine, Lily), plants or herbs (Greengrass, Thyme, Rosemary, Sage), colors (Grey, Black, White, Purple, Violet), planets (Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Pluto), metals (Brass, Irons), birds (Sparrow, Crowe, Hawke, Swift), professions (Goldsmith, Potter), natural phenomena (Gayle, Storm) (Blunt, Best, Goodwill). I suppose a name is a name, and the rarer it becomes, the more it will "smell as lovely," with apologies to Shakespeare.

India does have its fair share of quirky names. A well-known actor's name is Dimple, and her daughter's name is Twinkle; another actor's name is Tulip; a north Indian politician's name is Lovely, and Panda is a prominent surname within the eastern Indian state of Odisha.

South India, appears to be taking the cake when it comes to such names. Stalin is the name of Tamil Nadu's chief minister. Also, there are others named Krushchev, Brezhnev, Pushkin, Gagarin, Tereshkova, and Pravda. Surprisingly, they also are named after philosophies such as Marxism and Socialism.

In Tamil Nadu, a wedding was held where the groom's name is Socialism. Even tiny Marxism would not be left out when Socialism marries this weekend in southern India, having his older brothers Communism and Leninism in presence.

All are the offspring of A. Mohan, a Communist Party of India district secretary in Tamil Nadu, where left-wing ideology is still raging.

"My first child was born during the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I was reading everywhere that this would be the end of communism," Mohan said.

"However, communism has no end as long as humanity exists, therefore I named my firstborn Communism," he explained.

His next two kids are named Leninism (whose five-month-old son Marxism was also present at the wedding on Sunday) and Socialism, the groom.

Images of the wedding invitation, stamped with hammer-and-sickle symbols, have gone popular on social media.

Meanwhile, Socialism's bride-to-be is P. Mamata Banerjee, named after a fiery left-wing leader in West Bengal by her grandpa.

The reality that some other Banerjee reversed several decades of Communist leadership in the eastern state by becoming chief minister in 2011 does not jeopardize the party's reputation.

MK Stalin, Tamil Nadu's current chief minister, was called in memory of the Soviet communist leader by his father only days before he passed away in Russia.

Mohan claimed that his boys' names were not unique; several of his "colleagues" named their children Moscow, Russia, Vietnam, and Czechoslovakia.

He did, however, concede that his boys, particularly Communism, were often ridiculed at school.

While he was three years old, one hospital refused to admit him because he was a communist.

"They were afraid of the word Communism because I had a lot of difficulties at first. But, as time passed, things began to straighten out," he stated.

All three boys, now in their twenties, are followers of the local Communist party, and Leninism named his son Karl Marx.

"I am now expecting a granddaughter from one of my sons, whom I will call Cubaism," Mohan said.