# Devnagari: यमराज कपाल (?)



## katiekentucky

Hi, guys! I signed up to this forum specifically to ask this question.
I recently bought a pendant online, pictured below. I have no idea what is says, and neither did the seller, who was French and bought this on a trip to India. I asked several Indian friends if they knew the meaning or even the language. One friend told me that the second word was in Devangari, but she had no clue as to the meaning of either... anyone have any clues? I am assuming it is devotional/good luck, but feel a bit ignorant wearing it without knowing the meaning.  
If any of you have any more ideas about the provenance of something like this in addition to the meaning (who would have worn this, etc), it would be appreciated as well! 
Thank you, shukriya, etc. ! 
Katie


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## Englishmypassion

They are both written in Devnagari, but are not Hindi words as they stand. The nearest Hindi words are 'यम*रा*ज'( pronounced 'yamraaj'), the god of death in Hinduism, and क*पा*ल ( pronounced 'kapaal') meaning skull/head or skullcap. 'कपल' is the Devnagari spelling of  the word 'couple', used quite often in colloquial Hindi to mean the same thing as the English word. So, I wonder if it means यमराज कपल= the god of death and his wife/girlfriend! Or यमराज कपाल = the head/skull of  the god of death, or   यमराज कपाल = the skullcap of/ bearing the name of the god of death!  All of them sound weird to me, though there are a lot of devotees of Yamraaj here. Sorry, that's all I can do.


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## katiekentucky

That is creepy as heck!!! Just took the necklace off!...
Is it a negative thing? Or... any insight on that actual meaning??


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## Englishmypassion

I am  extremely sorry that my answer attached a negative value to your necklace and made you take it off but that's how it sounds, to me at least. Many people in India worship and are devotees of what I personally call negative deities. My personal observation is that most of such people believe in sacrifices, black magic, spirits, ghosts, etc. So to me, it's not a very positive/good/meaningful sign, though it may be very very religious/sacred to such/many people. The choice is _yours_.


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## uitwaa

How many times, before we wear something, do we try to find the meaning of the things? In this world of fashion, people often wear skull, snake and other spooky necklaces. This doesn't mean they are associating themselves to the meaning and symbolism related to those things.
So, if you like that necklace don't take it off.


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## hindiurdu

The way I read it, it says ?मरज़ कपल [?MRZ   KPL], there are no aa- e- i- u- or o- sounds in there. That is extremely different from यमराज कपाल! The writing is not that poor, so it is VERY unlikely that the person simply didn't do the matras. Also note the distinct nuqta under ज. I suspect what this is is English written in Hindi script. It is ?mmers Couple. Chummer's Couple? That could easily be a य or च or व. Wummer's Couple, Yummer's Couple or Chummer's Couple. It is not Hindi for sure. It might also be another language, maybe Nepali or Kumaoni or something? It does look rustic.

@katiekentucky It's probably in your head now, so obviously don't wear anything that spooks you. But I think it's impossible for this to be something diabolical.


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## katiekentucky

That is awesome and great news. The death god thing was freaking me out a bit. I still wear it sometimes, though it definitely took on a weird weight when i thought i was proclaiming i was the girlfriend of the death god! I'm going to go with the much more lighthearted interpretation "Yummer's Couple." Whatever that means, sounds fun. Hahaha. Thank you.


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## mundiya

katiekentucky said:


> That is awesome and great news. The death god thing was freaking me out a bit. I still wear it sometimes, though it definitely took on a weird weight when i thought i was proclaiming i was the girlfriend of the death god! I'm going to go with the much more lighthearted interpretation "Yummer's Couple." Whatever that means, sounds fun. Hahaha. Thank you.



Hi Katie 

This is just a guess, but I suspect someone with a poor knowledge of English was trying to write "summer's couple", possibly for tourists visiting during the summer.  To compare, "summer's couple" in Devanagari would properly be written समर्ज़ कपल.  It's plausible if we were to assume the first letter in ?मरज़ is a smudged स.  In that case, समरज़ (summeres) is a distorted pronunciation of समर्ज़ (summers).


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## katiekentucky

I'll take a poorly written "summer's couple" any day! That's pretty cute. That is some relatively strange swag to hawk to tourists, but, hey, I guess I bought it, so...
Thanks! Feeling a bit sorry for having judged my poor tourist trinket so harshly now.


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## littlepond

It does look to me as "yamraaj kapaal" (the skull of the death of God), with the "aa" matraa missing.


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## hindiurdu

littlepond said:


> It does look to me as "yamraaj kapaal" (the skull of the death of God), with the "aa" matraa missing.



First of all, in order for this to be true, two -aa maatras would have to be missing. It's been made by someone who can imprint curves and put the top line on, so why would he leave two -aa maatras out? I think the odds of that are basically zero. Your opinion differs, I know. Secondly, if you conjecture that -aa matras are missing, then you might as well conjecture that any other maatraas might be missing. So why wouldn't this be hemraaj kapil हेमराज कपिल (meaning: Kapil, King of the Snows), which would be a real name for someone. Or यसराज कपिल, which is a common corruption of यशराज कपिल (Gurmukhi/Takri/Sharda influenced rendering of स as म, common in the Western Himalayas). Or one of a hundred other things. Again, very, very unlikely. The writing has a certainty and competence about  it. He has even made flourishes under some of the letters: note the small back curves at the bottom of म and others. This is not someone who would miss any matras. The only fuzzy thing is the first letter, which is understandable. Several letters have that kind of rough shape.


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## flamboyant lad

I think It's यमराज कपाल (a foreigner reading out Yamraj kupal & an Indian writing it down as it was pronounced on the pendant)


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## hindiurdu

flamboyant lad said:


> I think It's यमराज कपाल (a foreigner reading out Yamraj kupal & an Indian writing it down as it was pronounced on the pendant)



Okay, but that seems super-random to me. Searching for Yamraj Kapal in Hindi and English gives me nothing at all. I've never heard of such a thing and, if anything, it seems kind of insulting to Yamraj. It's like saying "Satan's Skull." If you've got Satan's skull, you're not quite respecting Satan. In fact, you've kind of killed him. So, it seems bizarrely anti-death. Your conjecture that some foreign person dictated this and an Indian wrote it down seems like the only explanation if you absolutely want it to mean what you think it does. But then the Indian would have to not understand what was being said and just render Yummarz Kappal into Hindi. If you were banging out this thing, wouldn't you at least say, "hey, this is pure gibberish, what are you trying to say?" The letters do not look like they were done half-heartedly. Convert it to English however, and they make perfect sense. Summer's Couple. It's a match.


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## Wolverine9

hindiurdu said:


> Okay, but that seems super-random to me. Searching for Yamraj Kapal in Hindi and English gives me nothing at all. I've never heard of such a thing and, if anything, it seems kind of insulting to Yamraj. It's like saying "Satan's Skull." If you've got Satan's skull, you're not quite respecting Satan. In fact, you've kind of killed him. So, it seems bizarrely anti-death. Your conjecture that some foreign person dictated this and an Indian wrote it down seems like the only explanation if you absolutely want it to mean what you think it does. But then the Indian would have to not understand what was being said and just render Yummarz Kappal into Hindi. If you were banging out this thing, wouldn't you at least say, "hey, this is pure gibberish, what are you trying to say?" The letters do not look like they were done half-heartedly. Convert it to English however, and they make perfect sense. Summer's Couple. It's a match.



Yamraaj is not the equivalent of Satan, i.e the devil.  Rather, Yamraaj is analogous to Hades of Greek mythology.

If we are to assume an initial 'y', no transcription error, and schwa deletion, then the reading is "yamraj kapal" or "yamraz kapal".  I don't know how you're getting Yummarz Kappal.

If there was a mistake and the intended expression was "summer's couple", it makes me wonder why this particular expression would even be chosen when there are more idiomatic ways to indicate romance.


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## hindiurdu

Wolverine9 said:


> Yamraaj is not the equivalent of Satan, i.e the devil.  Rather, Yamraaj is analogous to Hades of Greek mythology.



True, but that makes it a lot less menacing and, therefore, a lot less likely as well. Why would someone make a Yamraaj locket? Pointless. Not pleasant enough to be pleasant, not spooky enough to be spooky. Just confusing. And "Yamraaj Skull" makes zero sense. Look online. I found absolutely zero connected things for it.



Wolverine9 said:


> If we are to assume an initial 'y', no transcription error, and schwa deletion, then the reading is "yamraj kapal" or "yamraz kapal".  I don't know how you're getting Yummarz Kappal.



You don't have to assume schwa deletion. Hindi-speakers automatically delete and insert schwas instinctively, and readers are quite tolerant of schwa-errors in print. They do not really use the script for hints on this at all. This has led to scribes becoming relaxed about how schwas are rendered, though over the past few decades there has been standardization. This is because of situations like this: अरथी, pronounced arthii. So, how should arth be written. In olden days, quite often, अरथ. You will see misspellings like this are rife, for example, in tattoos on older people. This tendency persists when rendering foreign or unfamiliar words. Often, people will write गवालियर, even in print now, though the word is ग्वालियर. For that matter, अरविनद for Arvind - this is not a common name in some parts of the country but has achieved recent popularity, so they're sort of spelling it out, though everyone will say 'Arvind' not 'Aravinad'. But writers are FAR, FAR, FAR more obsessive about matras and always include them. If there's a long -aa, you will always see it. रामचन्द्र can become रामचनदर but can NEVER become रमचन्द्र (except as a mistake). ग्वालियर can never be ग्वलियर (except as a spelling error).



Wolverine9 said:


> If there was a mistake and the intended expression was "summer's couple", it makes me wonder why this particular expression would even be chosen when there are more idiomatic ways to indicate romance.



He wrote what he was asked to write. You can imagine the dialogue:

Person: Yummerz
Scribe: What?
Person: Yummerz. Yum-murz.
Scribe: य-म-ज़?
Person: Yes.
Scribe: Yamaz? Sahi hai?
Person: No, not Yamaz, Yama-rrr-zzz.
Scribe: Uff, achchha, य-म-*र*-ज़?
Person: Bingo! Yuh-Muh-Ruh-Zuh.
Scribe: [Knock, knock, Bang, Bang] Here, you like it?
Person: Nice!

I think it has a positive personal meaning to someone. Happy vibes, definitely. You can imagine that he made one, saw it made some people happy and then made more of the same, not realizing that this isn't some common phrase in English. If it is in the hills, I can easily see this as Summers. Like I said स is written closer to ਸ (that's Gurmukhi 's'), but even the head on that thing becomes almost gone when you write it. It can easily resemble the letter on the locket above. However, this is pure conjecture on my part. There is no way to know.

I just see absolutely no way at all that this can be Yamraaj or Kapaal. That requires skipping matras and no way do people do that.


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