Indian Name - South Indian Names - Surnames or Family Names

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.

1. Invented family names such as that of Rajesh Pilot.
2. The English last name of Anglo-Indians - descendants of British and Indian parents.
3. Portuguese-Goan last names, such as Fernandes.
4. 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'...