The mystery of the Great Indian Name

Had an interesting experience today. A colleague called up and enquired if she was talking to thyagi. It was a little strange since this was a short form of my father's first name. I had to politely remind her that this was my father's first name and my surname. It set me thinking about a few idiosyncrasies in Indian names. By the way, it was not a first time as i once got mistaken for a terrorist in the USA when i failed up to show for a selective profiling before a flight as the announcer called me as Mr. Thyagarajan.

• Most of the Northern, Western and Eastern states are pretty much aligned with the western model of naming which follows a <First Name> <Surname> approach where the Surname is the family name. Examples are Sharma, Patel (only non-English name in the top 100 British surnames) etc.,
• The south offers its own flavour with different communities having their own variants. My community, for instance uses the father's first name as the Surname and this is a primary reason for the confusion caused above. However some of the others use the community as their surname. Examples would be Main Shankar Iyer, Sundaram Iyengar, Mohan Reddy etc.,
• There are a few communities which have a family name derived from their native villages but they just keep adding more alphabets with every generation, especially in our neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh. An example would be an acquaintance who goes by the name of Mr. PSKRV Rao. It just gets mind blogging to even ask him to elaborate on the abbreviation which has a mix of first names and surnames. The easiest is to address him as Mr. Rao.
• One of other neighbouring states (Kerala) offers a couple of interesting variants. You have a category of names where nobody is sure whether the word in the name is the surname or the first name. Sometimes, you are pointed out that a specific word is the first name but nobody agrees on which word is the surname. An acquaintance goes by the name of Ernakulam John Arul Vincent Kochan. We address him as John. But nobody is sure which is the surname. Bear in Mind that Ernakulam is also the name of a city in Kerala
• There is an interesting category of folks who tend to augment their first names by adding the name of a place to their first name. A relative goes by the name of Kolathur Subramaniam, where Kolathur is the name of their place of origin. There is yet another bunch which adds the name of their origin city as their surname. Example Chitra Mysore.
• An interesting trend is the nature of some of the anti-social elements in my state (Tamilnadu)
  to augment their names with a few words. These could be derived from
• Their weapon of choice (Blade Pakkiri, Bomb Shekar)
• Their locality where they spread their menace (Nochukuppam Mari, Adyar
  Arumugam)
• There was a recent popular Tamil movie, Thirupaachi where the villains go by the name of Saniyan Sagadai, Pan Parag Ravi and Pattasu balu.Now Ravi and Balu are perefectly normal names while nobody understands what Sagadai means. Looking at the objectives, Saniyan is the tamil equivalent of Satan, Pan Parag refers to a chewing tobacco based product and Pattasu translates into firecrackers. These names are just there to impress their self proclaimed importance on the common man.
• Another interesting observation pertains to the first names which clearly do not specify the sex of the individual. Good examples are words like Kiran, Kripa, Suman etc., where the names could apply to Gents as well as ladies. So you need a voice or their personal presence to even figure out the personality that you are addressing.

So next time, you hear an Indian name, make sure that you get good clarity on how to address the person.