i hope this becomes an ironclad tradition if you're black and want to be in the government, your first name has to be a word in a uralic language.
i mean, it's only happened twice, but it has happened twice.
barack = apricot/peach in hungarian
and now this kamala stuff in finnish.Apparently Finnish kamala is speculated to be related to Russian komólyj ("hornless") via Proto-Indo-European *ḱom-olo-s (also "hornless"). This PIE term became Proto-Germanic *hamalaz, with the meaning shifting from "hornless" to "mutilated", and then this Germanic term was loaned into Proto-Finnic as *kamala, with the meaning shifting in the direction of "bad" or "terrible".
...Unsurprisingly, completely unrelated to the given name Kamala, which is instead of Dravidian origin via Sanskrit, and means "lotus".
Every time I hear the name "Kamala", it surprises me of its Sanskrit etymology (tbf, I didn't expect much from her name), as much as the name "Costello" (a superficial look at the latter name would tell ya that's Italian)
It's a bit easier to imagine Costello is an Irish name if you hear it pronounced as "Costlow"
