Covid Kapoor shares his name with COVID-19

When he turned 30 at the start of the pandemic, his friends ordered a cake with his name and age from a bakery in his hometown of Bangalore, India.

But the bakery assumed the whole thing must have been a joke and just wrote ‘Covid-30’ on Kovid Kapoor’s birthday cake.

– Yes, I tweeted about it. It’s a coincidence and I chose to joke about it.

https://twitter.com/kovidkapoor/status/1478752159495688197

To choose joy, he decided already in February 2020, when the World Health Organization WHO presented the name of this new disease that will plague the world for several years. Then the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, explained That it was not entirely easy to come up with a name, because they had to find a name that did not refer to a “geographical place, animal, individual or ethnic group”.

– I immediately noticed that they were spelled like my name and pronounced similarly. Coved Kapoor says, in fact, the letter d is a little softer in covid, but you don’t have that sound in English, so most people pronounce my name just like Ill, even if I introduce myself with the correct pronunciation.

He has a pinned tweet At the top of his Twitter account: “My name is Covid, not a virus.”

It’s often a reaction when people hear my name these days. For example, when I order a coffee at Starbucks, they usually call out the name. I notice people stopping and reacting. But really, this is not a problem. Sometimes, if I don’t have the strength to react, I usually come up with a fake name, so I can order my coffee in peace, says Kovid Kapoor.

– But I’ve noticed that it’s a good way to break the ice, when I meet someone I’ve never met before. Then we can talk for a while about my name. Most people react to the fact that it is the same disease as COVID-19.

He says his mother chose his name, a traditional Hindu name meaning apprentice.

– I think it’s a beautiful meaning. I didn’t think much of my name until the pandemic. It is not very common in India. I’ve only met one person in my life who calls himself like me, a guy in college. I actually called him at the beginning of 2020 to hear how things are going, but he also doesn’t seem to think it’s that hard.

In recent weeks Kovid Kapoor has been in contact with more people of the same name. The Washington Post drew attention to this phenomenon With people of roughly the same name as covid-19 and a number of other magazines around the world have commented on the story.

– After the first article was published with an interview with me, a lot of people called covid heard from me and shared many fun stories and covid jokes.

One of them, says Kovid Kapoor, has created a group on social media, called “Covid Support Group”.

– It’s like a joke. But it is fun to share different stories and laugh together. Kovid Kapoor says I would like to meet more people called Covid in the future, now that we have this in common.

According to Statistics Sweden, there are two men in Sweden with the name Covid. None of them spell c.

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