All in a surname

Krishnan Valappil

The surname, never mandatory until a few decades ago, has now become an instrument of alphabetical tyranny for many South Indians. When government application forms demanded it, countless people found themselves staring at the blank space where it was supposed to be. Some wrote their caste; others used their father’s name, while bolder ones – my kin included – front-loaded both the parents’ names in Latin American style—turning themselves into walking genealogical shields. The rest seized anything that felt remotely meaningful: ancestral homes, forgotten villages, family legends, rivers—creating alphabetic absurdities just to survive.

If India ever hosted a surname championship, Maharashtra would take the crown before anyone found their voter ID. Packed with Patils, Joshis, Ranes and village‑prefixed Gaonkars, it becomes a micro‑geographical atlas in human form. The region boasts a surname-to-human ratio that defies demographic logic and data storage. Pride here is measured not in GDP but in surnames per capita—a metric that hit saturation long ago. Maharashtra’s charm is not just numbers but its onomastic repertoire, which sounds like accidental English comedy: Mr More, Mr Date, Mr Hole, Mr Gate. By the time you reach Mr Pimple, it begins to sound like a dermatology report.

In bygone Kerala, names reflected caste: the humble mostly prefixed caste labels to names, and the elite suffixed them. Unlike Keshavan Nair, a Pulayan (Dalit), Raman could never become Raman Pulayan, as such lexical reversals would have triggered collective cardiac arrest of caste custodians. Over time, these markers shrank to cryptic initials, parodying humility in school registers. A sagacious headmaster spared me this lexicographic ignominy by replacing my caste initial with a melodious territorial surname.

In northern Karnataka, surname genealogy mixes with gastronomy. The chilli grower is Mr Menasinakai, the garlic merchant Mr Bellulli, and the coriander farmer Mr Kothambari—a kitchen garden with voting rights, not a family tree. Historians see a rustic heritage in this; cynics call it primitive SEO, ensuring the taxman never forgets who grew what.

In Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, names turned into compressed autobiographies—initials encoding lineage, village, and ancestry, making introductions obsolete. After the anti-Hindi agitations, a baby-naming renaissance erupted, with names so fiercely Tamil that even Sangam poets might need subtitles. Phonetic border guards then expelled letters like sha, sa, and ha—Aryan trespassers in a Dravidian fortress. My namesake shed imported frills to emerge as the starkly Tamil Kiruttinan—a virtuoso act of alphabetic exile!

Nurseries then produced more than babies; they birthed walking manifestos: Nedunchezhiyan and Kanimozhi—names thick with Tamil pride. The consonant zh, unique to Tamil, became a linguistic booby trap. Across India, every introduction turned into experimental theatre, as North Indian tongues tangled and surrendered to the mystical zh. In a country craving uniformity, Tamil Nadu chose linguistic guerrilla warfare, wielding a consonant almost none could pronounce—except their arch rivals in the job market, Malayalis. It was as if the state said, “You wanted uniformity? Pronounce this.” With just two letters, zh, staged a peaceful phonetic coup, forcing northern bureaucrats to reduce such names to bare initials for survival.

In the Northeast, pronunciation becomes an endurance sport. For mainlanders, meeting a Zothanpari or Lalchhuanmawia is less an introduction and more an oral test.

Then arrive the gender-neutrals: Kiran, Gagan and Baby, blithely discarding burdens of anatomy. South Indian parents persist in christening their offspring “Baby”, ensuring that each one becomes a lifelong crisis centre.

Consequence: utter chaos, a Baby uncle, Baby aunty and Babychan: two genders in the same hamlet.

By contrast, Sikhs display nominative genius. With divine economy, they give a unisex forename, then add ‘Singh’ for men and ‘Kaur’ for women—no identity suspense, just Rolls-Royce precision in a Maruti world. A masterstroke of linguistic engineering where clarity reigns and confusion quietly exits.

In this wild frontier of names, where creativity runs unchecked, the nation now flirts with alphabetic anarchy.
One wonders if it is time for a directive, binding naming protocol to tame the chaos unleashed by the simple act of christening a child.

(The writer is a retired technocrat and freelance writer based in Mumbai)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.