I am currently in Indian name hell…for those of you who don’t know, I work for an immigration law firm, and they’ve just put me on an account that employs a lot of Indian nationals, and it’s making me batty. No the Indians themselves, of course; it’s their names. I can’t make heads or tails of them, at least not consistently.
Part of my job is checking for consistency of people’s names on their immigration-related forms (husband, wife, kids, parents, before vs. after marriage, name on passport vs. visa vs. birth certificate vs. marriage certificate…you get the picture). I use this to make sure that the paperwork I create is correct and accurate, both to make sure we don’t make fools of ourselves to our clients and so that INS doesn’t think we’re trying to pull a fast one. If I do my job well, life is good. If I don’t, applications can be stuck for months longer than they need to be while we clear things up.
So how do first/last names work in India? There seems to be a segment of society that uses the father’s last name as a last name, while others seem to do things more the Western way of using the father’s last name as a last name. Some wives change their last names when they marry, while others don’t. So what system is there, if any? Or are there several systems? If the latter, what controls which system someone uses? Geography and/or ethnicity? Degree of adaptation to American culture? Or is asking each individual the only way to know for sure? The whole thing is giving me a headache.
Don’t be hurt; I know you well enough to know you’d see this pretty darn quickly! (And I was right, wasn’t I?) Now if you would only give me enough credit for being able to judge the actions and reactions of other people I know…but that’s a whole other thread.
Besides, I also know you well enough to know that your particular individual neck of the woods is somewhat assimilated, or at least more so than the necks of the woods of most of my clients. That’s why I want a bigger cross-section, silly. (Besides, I’ve seen enough variety to know that the rules must vary somewhat; I’m just trying to figure out the rules for the exceptions.)
Now, now, if it makes you feel better, I’ll bake you some cookies or something.
I work with a guy who calls himself Jaikrishnan. However, I had to process a document for him the other day and found his full name is Ramakrishnan. Is “Jai” short for “Rama”?
OK, now if you’ll allow me to be my anal legalistic self for a moment, how would the name issue be handled if a North Indian married a South Indian? Or does that never happen?
If a Southern female married a Northern male, most certainly, the female’s name would get changed to first name + husband’s last name. If it’s the other way around, I’m not sure. My aunt’s married to a South Indian and has adopted his surname. But then again, he writes his name North-Indian style.
OK, this is enough to give a poor Anglophone girl a splitting headache; it’s yet another Indian name pattern. The family in question is from somewhere near Chennai, or at least they got their visas in Chennai. I don’t have a marriage certificate for them, so I don’t have her maiden name.
Her married name, however, is what looks like her own first name, plus her husband’s first and middle names as a two-part last name. Unless this is just a culturally clueless error on the part of whoever did the data entry for their visas in Chennai (consular admin personnel are generally local hires, so I doubt it), I’ve never seen this particular naming pattern for married Indian women before. Please explain.
I’ve personally never heard of a woman using her husband’s first and middle names to form a surname. It might just be an error, or perhaps I just haven’t been exposed to my culture enough.
It should follow the woman’s first-name + husband’s first name + husband’s surname pattern, I believe.
North India
Male: Given name + Father’s name + Father’s Surname
Single woman: Given name + Father’s name + Father’s Surname
Married woman: Given name + Husband’s name + Husband’s Surname
The order may vary though. Some passports (such as mine) list the order as Father’s/Hubby’s Surname + Given name + Father’s/Hubby’s name
South India
It gets very complicated because some south Indian cultures don’t seem to have the concept of surnames, per se. Some (such as Tamilians and Malayalis) include their hometown + father’s given name + own given name. Some have a surname tacked on, some don’t. Many also follow a simpler route:
Male: Given name + Father’s first name
Female: Given name + Father’s/Husband’s given name.
In the case of your Chennai female…it is possible that her husband’s 3 names follow the order Own name + Surname + Father’s name, in which case she would take her own name followed by the first two from her husband’s. But this is purely guesswork.
OK, a new and exciting corollary to the Indian Name Game: it’s the Pakistani Name Game!
For rather obvious historical reasons, I’m guessing Pakistani names work in a similar manner (or manners, as it appears) to Indian names. I’ve got passports for a Pakistani family on my desk right now, and the wife’s name is First name + Husband’s last name on most of her documents. However, the full name listed on her passport is First name + Husband’s FIRST name. (She’s from Karachi and is a Muslim, if that matters.)
I’m really confused now. Does anyone know to what extent Pakistani naming patterns mirror those of neighboring regions in India?
My ancestry is South Asian, and we consider ourselves Pakistani, so I can help.
The traditional manner of naming is “first name” + “father’s first name.” When a woman marries, she takes her husband’s first name. So instead of “first name” + “father’s first name”, it becomes “first name” + “husband’s first name.” Children will take the father’s first name, and so everyone has the same last name except the father (who retains his father’s first name as his last name).
Now, however, things are changing. In my own extended family we have some who adhere to the traditional manner, and others (like us) who have adopted a last name (how this is done varies) and keep it constant for father, wife, children, etc.
My wife wanted to take my name as her last name. I refused. It’s too sexist. But older heads prevailed and so her name is now “first name” + my entire name (“first name” “middle name” “last name”). Thus, she’s taken my name as her last name but we all still have the same last name. (Her having a different last name from mine might be inconvenient, especially since I don’t believe in the old naming system).
You might want to note here that there is a small cosmopolitan population that - in case of married women - either retains their maiden name or attaches a hyphen (such as Justin Henin-Hardenne).
North Indian names are rather simple to follow. It’s the South Indian names that are difficult to decipher at times. As stated previously, the divide between North Indian and South Indian is along state lines, but there are plenty of North Indians who live in the South of India and vice versa, so it’s not so much where you were born as it is where your family is/was originally from.
My Passport lists my name (Single male of North Indian origin) as Father’s (Family) Surname - First Name - Father’s Name. My U.S. visa lists my name as Surname = Father’s (Family) Surname and Give Names = First Name - Father’s Name.
I wouldn’t be surprised if data entry operators (or form fillers) have made errors in entry.
Not really; actually, it’s giving me a headache…it seems that one has to know the family’s entire genealogical, religious, and geographical/migration history, as well as their outlook on feminism, Westernization, and modernity in order to be able to fill out visa forms 100% correctly. Well, even if I can’t always be accurate, I can at least be educated.
(Then again, I shouldn’t talk; as an American Jewish feminist agnostic of East European origin, the naming systems in my background are equally complicated. In Eastern Europe, Jews didn’t usually have last names in the current Western understanding until the 19th century…and after that, last names became a patchwork of patronymics, places of origin, profession of the head of household, and possibly rabbinic dynasty, frequently with variations in Hebrew, Yiddish, and/or the local vernacular. Thus we have Tevye the Milkman of *Fiddler on the Roof * fame.
