India Naming Customs

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 * Behind the Name: Indian Surnames
 * Behind the Name: Indian Given Names

Surnames
In India, surnames are placed as last names or before first names, which often denote: village of origin, caste, clan, office of authority their ancestors held, or trades of their ancestors.

The largest variety of surnames is found in the states of Maharashtra and Goa, which numbers more than the rest of India together. Here surnames are placed last, the order being: the given name, followed by the father's name, followed by the family name. The majority of surnames are derived from the place where the family lived, with the 'ker' (Marathi) or 'Kar'(Konkani) suffix, for example, Mumbaiker, Puneker, Aurangabadker or Tendulkar, Parrikar, Mangeshkar, Mahendrakar. Another common variety found in Maharashtra and Goa are the ones ending in 'e'. These are usually more archaic than the 'Kar's and usually denote medieval clans or professions like Rane, Salunkhe, Gupte, Bhonsle, Ranadive, Rahane, Hazare, Apte, Satpute, Shinde, Sathe, Londhe, Salve, Kale, Gore, Godbole, etc.

In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, surnames usually denote family names. It is easy to track family history and the caste they belonged to using a surname.

In Odisha and West Bengal, surnames denote the caste they belong. There are also several local surnames like Das, Patnaik, Mohanty, Jena etc.

In Kerala, surnames denote the caste they belong. There are also several local surnames like nair, menon, panikkar etc.

It is a common in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and some other parts of South India that the spouse adopts her husband's first name instead of his family or surname name after marriage.[10]

India is a country with numerous distinct cultural and linguistic groups. Thus, Indian surnames, where formalized, fall into seven general types.

Origins
Surnames are based on:
 * Patronymics and ancestry, whereby the father's name or an ancestor's given name is used in its original form or in a derived form (e.g. Baranwal or Barnwal or Burnwal derived from the ancestor Ahibaran).
 * Occupations (Chamar, Patel or Patil, meaning Village Headman, Gandhi, Kamath, Kulkarni, who used to maintain the accounts and records and collect taxes, Kapadia, Nadkarni, Patwardhan, Patwari, Shenoy, etc.) and priestly distinctions (Bhat, Bhattar, Sastry, Trivedi, Shukla, Chaturvedi, Twivedi, Purohit, Mukhopadhyay); Business people: Shetty, Rai, Hegde is commonly used in kshatriya castes of the Karnataka coastal belt. In addition, many Parsi, Bohra and Gujarati families have used English trade names as last names since the 18th and 19th centuries (Contractor, Engineer, Builder).
 * Caste or clan names (Pillai, Gounder, Goud, Gowda, Boyar, Parmar, Sindhi, Vaish, Reddy, Meena, Nair, Nadar and Naidu) are not surnames but suffixes to first names to indicate their clan or caste.
 * Place names or names derived from places of ancestral origin (Aluru, Marwari, Gavaskar, Gaonkar, Mangeshkar, Kapoor, Wamankar, Kokradi, Karnad, Sandhu, Medukonduru, Rachapalli).
 * The father's first name is used as a surname in certain Southern states, such as Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Spouses and children take on the first name of the father as their last name or 'surname'.
 * Muslim surnames generally follow the same rules used in Pakistan. Khan is among the most popular surnames, often signifying Afghan/Central Asian descent.
 * Bestowed titles or other honorifics: titles bestowed by kings, rajas, nawabs and other nobles before the British Raj (Wali, Rai, Rao, Thakur, Gain/Gayen, Panicker, Vallikappen, Moocken, etc.) and those bestowed by the British (Rai, Bahadur).

The convention is to write the first name followed by middle names and surname. It is common to use the father's first name as the middle name or last name even though it is not universal. In some Indian states like Maharashtra, official documents list the family name first, followed by a comma and the given names.

Traditionally, wives take the surname of their husband after marriage. In modern times, in urban areas at least, this practice is not universal and some wives either suffix their husband's surname or do not alter their surnames at all. In some rural areas, particularly in North India, wives may also take a new first name after their nuptials. Children inherit their surnames from their father.

Jains generally use Jain, Shah, Firodia, Singhal or Gupta as their last names. Sikhs generally use the words Singh ("lion") and Kaur ("princess") as surnames added to the otherwise unisex first names of men and women, respectively. It is also common to use a different surname after Singh in which case Singh or Kaur are used as middle names (Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Surinder Kaur Badal). The tenth Guru of Sikhism ordered (Hukamnama) that any man who considered himself a Sikh must use Singh in his name and any woman who considered herself a Sikh must use Kaur in her name. Other middle names or honorifics that are sometimes used as surnames include Kumar, Dev, Lal, and Chand.

The modern-day spellings of names originated when families translated their surnames to English, with no standardization across the country. Variations are regional, based on how the name was translated from the local language to English in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries during British rule. Therefore, it is understood in the local traditions that Baranwal and Barnwal represent the same name derived from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab respectively. Similarly, Tagore derives from Bengal while Thakur is from Hindi-speaking areas. The officially recorded spellings tended to become the standard for that family. In the modern times, some states have attempted standardization, particularly where the surnames were corrupted because of the early British insistence of shortening them for convenience. Thus Bandopadhyay became Banerji, Mukhopadhay became Mukherji, Chattopadhyay became Chatterji, etc. This coupled with various other spelling variations created several surnames based on the original surnames. The West Bengal Government now insists on re-converting all the variations to their original form when the child is enrolled in school.

Some parts of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar, and Indonesia have similar patronymic customs to those of India.