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'...

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Famous quotes containing the words family and/or names:

    Chant lessons and your family will prosper; drunken ditties will lead you to ruin.
    Chinese proverb.

    Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)