Surnames or Family Names
Family names are not common in Tamil Nadu, but most of the rest of India uses a family name. There are also certain people in Karnataka which do not use Family names anymore, however have initials to indicate their fathers name.
- Invented family names such as that of Rajesh Pilot.
- The English last name of Anglo-Indians - descendants of British and Indian parents.
- Portuguese-Goan last names, such as Fernandes.
- Arabic surnames of Muslims with ancestors embraced Islam and Muslims of mixed Arab and Indian descent.
Many South Indians also use a family name.
Common South Indian surnames/family names are:
Kumar, Rao, Murthy or Moorthi OR Moorthy, Shastri, Acharya,, Prasad, Swamy, Pillai
In Karnataka: Gowda, Nayak, Hegde and many north Karnataka families have the some surnames which are more popular in Maharastra such as Despande, Desmukh, Kulkarni,etc.
Mangalorean:(Tulu, Konkani) Shetty, Rai, Hegde, Bhat, Kamat, Pai, Bhandary, Upadhyay, Poojary, Moily, Alva, Ballal, Chowta, Naik, Kadamba, Hoysala, Maurya, Poonja
North Karnataka: Patil, Desai, Joshi, Kulkarni,Dodamani, Patil
In Andhra: Rao, Kumar, Chowdary, Reddy, Naidu, Raju, Varma, Shastri, Achari, Sharma, Setti!, Setty, Chetty, Gupta, Chari, Sharma, Bharadvaj
In Kerala: Namboodiri, Nair, Menon, Nambiar, Pannikar, Potti, Warrier, Kurian, Cherian, Varghese, Varma, Kutty...
In Tamil Nadu: Iyer, Chettiar, Chetty, Achari, Mudaliar, Subrahmyan, Pillai, Nayar, Sooriyaprakash, Devan, Ilaiya, Rajan, Veluram, Peera, ending in 'swamy/swami', ending in 'rajan', ending in 'pillai', Senthil, Murugan, Vijay, Sondharam, Sudhakar, Muthayan, Chandran, Jaison, starting with 'Jaya/Jeya', Jeyaramachandharan, Peeramaswamyan, Ranganatham, Kumar, Kular, Ikkuzhan, Adath, Murthiyrakkaventharan, Meena, ending with 'enthen/eenthen', ending with 'poosam/poosan'...
Read more about this topic: Indian Name, South Indian Names
Famous quotes containing the words family and/or names:
“Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.”
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)
“Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, “just in case” in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)