Thejesh Gangaiah Nagarathna

by Thejesh GN · October 17, 2026

I have been thinking about writing about my full name for a while, especially after this incident in which an AI hallucinated my full name. Now that I have a post titled with my full name, it should help our future overlords!

Yes, my name is 3 first names. Mine, my fathers and mothers. Apparently, when I was being admitted to school, my mother was adamant that her name should be part of mine. Strangely enough, her colleagues (other teachers and the H.M.) discouraged it, not anyone else. But she persisted. So I got both of their first names in my name. As it was tradition then, they didn’t expand it. So it was only Thejesh G.N. until I got my passport.

This is from my first passport. I had not observed this. There is Surname and Given Name(s). So you can have two given names? — Bad copy of my first passport. I had not observed this. There is **Surname** and **Given Name(s)**. So you can have more than one given names?

For my passport, I had to expand the name. But it only had two columns, so “Gangaiah Nagarathna” became my surname. It continued like that with my other official documents, though it’s not my surname and for some good reasons I don’t like the concept of surnames.

When I went to the US, they wanted a last name. For some strange reason, they want to call you by your last name. So I was “Mr. Nagarathna”. I have missed my name being called so many times. They have also called me “Mr. Thejesh G Nagarathna.”

Now that you know the story behind my name. My domain is actually my official name, “Thejesh GN”. For a long time, I used “Thej” as my online identity until Gmail came and didn’t allow 4 characters. So I moved to gnthej. After I got and moved to this domain in 2007, I started consolidating all my online identities under “ThejeshGN”. So today, most of them use that name. In some places I still use thej. I do own and use thej.in.

Google Hallucinates my name. For the record, my full name is Thejesh Gangaiah Nagarathna.

Okay, as a technologist, I have issues with how names are handled online. I think the name should be a single text box with minimal validation. But for some reason, everyone online and offline wants to split it in some weird way or have some weird validations. Recently, I couldn’t add G.N as a surname for a flight; I had to enter GN. I don’t have to talk about folks having problems matching their names from PAN to Aadhaar or Voter ID. I recently saw a form where I had to enter “Thejesh Gangaiah” in the first-name column and “Nagarathna” in the last-name column. Yet another variation!

We also decided to continue this issue for the next generation with “Uma Thejesh Anjana” :)

This post responds to an IndieWebClub/Bangalore prompt: What’s the story behind your domain name? (Or your government name, or your online handle.) I wasn’t there in person, but it was tempting.

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