When a child is born, the biggest challenge the parents face is to select a beautiful name for the baby. They want it to sound good, must not be prone to be shortened or used for bullying/teasing, and must be unique. Perhaps my parents also explored many names and finally settled for the one that I presently use to identify myself. But unfortunately, my parents were not unique to be selecting this unique name — several other parents were thinking along parallel lines. So it happened that there were 5 Amits in my class — Amit Dobhal, Amit Malik, Amit Misra, Amit Rai, and Amit Saini. Add to it the four from the other section, and the number rose to 9. And the number kept increasing with every passing year.
Sometimes I wonder why such sudden preference in selecting this beautiful word for a child’s name? And it happened in the middle 1970s, and not before. Well friends, this phenomenon coincided with the rising popularity of megastar Amitabh Bachchan — except Anand (1971), all his mega-hits occurred after 1973. And did you know that Amitabh has also the record (please check) of adopting the screen name Vijay in no less than 20 films! So now you know why the name Vijay is also so popular, though other than Vijay Kashyap and Vijay Arora, there have not been many big screen stars with that name. Vijay Raaz has entered the scene only recently.
Once our school principal sent an employee to call me. The poor fellow just informed the teacher that the principal has called for Amit. The teacher asked, “Which one? There are four of them”. The employee did not know. So the teacher sent all the 5 of us. The principal selected the one he wanted to talk to and the others were sent back.
photo credit: One Way Stock Hello My Name Is Growth via photopin (license)
Pradyot 
but now if I search Amit misra IIT K , I get your home page of IITK .http://home.iitk.ac.in/~snt/group/Amit.html
Sorry Rupesh, but that page seems to be old. The latest news is that there is another person called Amit Mishra working in our own group. Besides, there is another Amit Mishra in accounts department. I have been told about another employee sharing my name, though I have never met him. There could be more.
very nice nice interesting topic thanks for sharing
So true! Common names inspired by Amitabhji & other stars!
My cousin has the same name- Amit 🙂