When Women Needed Only One Name
From Nargis to Rekha, their singular names became spectacle, their lives became legend. What killed the era of the mononym?
In a 2004 episode of Rendezvous, talk show host Simi Garewal, haloed by candlelight and dressed in her signature white, introduces her guest with a breathless reverence: “elusive, enigmatic, almost mythical… the ultimate diva.” Her guest, nearing 50, settles in for her first television interview in 20 years, radiating in a way only someone gilded by decades of adoration can be. When asked about the many lives she has already lived, she answers without hesitation. “I will always be Bhanurekha… Whatever she was innately as a human being, she’s still very much there. Very shy…very loving, a loner.”
To audiences, of course, she is not Bhanurekha, but simply Rekha, a name as familiar across marquees as it is in tabloids and gossip columns. But Rekha wasn’t the first to shoulder this legacy.
Before Beyoncé was selling out stadiums, before Cheryl Sarkisian became Cher, before Madonna turned her name into something secularly holy, Indian actresses were already living as mononyms. Nargis, Madhubala, Helen, Suraiya. Their names were engineered to enchant the imagination of many, while not belonging to anyone in particular. But in an era of Instagram and endless podcasts, one-named icons have all but disappeared, and with them, an aura of mystery and, perhaps, a certain kind of stardom.