Aadi Nashikkar, a Colorado Knowledge Bowl state champion, a Stanford-bound young man and a Colorado Springs School senior with a 4.499 GPA, lost his name sometime during the eighth grade. In Sanskrit, Aadi means “beginning.” When Nashikkar first ran for student government in eighth grade, he was quite unenthusiastic about his first name because it seemed nearly everyone had their own pronunciation for it. “I never corrected anyone,” Nashikkar said. “It was easier to fit in if I let people take my name and mold it to their liking. I was no longer saying even my own name correctly.” When he recounted his disappointment about losing his first election, Nashikkar’s mother, Kshama Belsare, stopped him and asked him what he had just called himself. Nashikkar pronounced his name wrong. His mother set him straight.