What's in a name

Whats in a name ?

"A rose by any other name

Would smell as sweet".

So said the bard but little did he know. That names matter was brought home to me rather forcefully recently when a friend of 50 years complained that I constantly misspelled his name ( never mind that his name was spelt fifty different ways anyway). Then another dear friend was miffed that I had forgotten her maiden name although I had remembered her name and her surname.

In any case where did these surnames come from ? What were their origins? The more I looked at their origins, the more I learnt how complex these names were and how much information they could provide about the person. It is important to remember that the use of a surname is relatively new in history and was adopted in order to legally distinguish two individuals with the same first name and that at first, these last names were not passed down to the next generation.

The Chinese were among the very first cultures to adopt the use of hereditary surnames about 5000 years ago. In Europe, surnames weren't used until the 10th or 11th centuries AD in Venice. Gradually throughout Europe, all nobility and gentry adopted surnames until eventually surnames were used by all Europeans of all classes. Surnames were generally derived from four sources.

The first were based on the name of the father- or patronymic. Examples of these are Peterson - son of Peter (Swedish),Mc- /Mac- - son of (Scottish) etc.

The second were those based on area where they came from. Some examples of these surnames are KirkPatrick - Church (kirk) of St. Patrick, Cliff - steep hill etc.

The third kind were based on occupation or social status. Common examples of these are:Cooper - barrel maker, Wagner or Waggoner - wagon maker, eSmith - blacksmith or Powers - poor or taken a vow of poverty.

Finally there were surnames describing the person or personality. Examples of these are Reid - red, ruddy complexion or red hair, Stout - Body size, Armstrong - strong arms or Sharpe - sharp, smart

But each country has its own peculiar origins of surnames. Take India for example. India is a country with numerous distinct cultural and linguistic groups. Thus, Indian surnames, where formalized, fall into seven- not four- general types. Many people from the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, however, do not use any formal surnames, though most have one. Also in Northern India, most of the people have their family name after the given names, whereas in Southern India, the given names come after the family name. But most surnames fall into one of the seven categories:

▪ Patronymics and ancestry, where the father's name or an ancestor's given name is used in its original form or in a derived form (e.g. Agrawal or Agrawala derived from the ancestor Agrasen).

▪ Occupations (eg Patil meaning Village Headman,); priestly distinctions (Sastry, Purohit); businesspeople (eg Shetty) 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). Parsis also have the wonderfully evocative names like Sodawater bottle opener wallah!

▪ Caste or clan names (Pillai 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 ( eg Gawaskar, Mangeshkar, Kapoor).

▪ A few last names originate from the names of the ancestors(eg Juthani)

▪ The father's first name is used as a surname in certain Southern states, such as Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

▪ Bestowed titles or other honorifics (titles bestowed by kings, rajas, nawabs and other nobles before the British Raj (Wali, Rai, Panicker,etc.) and those bestowed by the British (Rai, Bahadur).

▪ Names indicating nobility or feudal associations or honorifics (Chowdary, Varma, Tagore, Thakur)

▪ Colonial Surnames based on tax or after religious conversion, particularly in Goa which was under Portuguese control (D'Cruz, Pinto). Often, surnames of Portuguese noble families who were accepted as godparents were used as the surnames of the converted. Some families still keep their ancestral Hindu surnames along with their given Catholic Surnames e.g. Miranda-Prabhu and Pereira-Shenoy.

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.

It is customary for wives to take the surname of their husband after marriage. In modern times, in urban areas at least, this practice is not universal. 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.

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 Agrawal and Aggarwal 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 at 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.

So the next time you are tempted to take a short cut and mispronounce or forget a surname, take heed for you are treading on dangerous waters.