I'm trying to understand how Hindu names work, especially in India. In the North, it seems, you have a given name followed by a surname, which may well have some caste relation (so Mohandas Ghandi came from a family that were originally grocers). In the South, there are no surnames, and the given name is preceded by one or two other names, which may be initialised, relating to father and place of origin, so K.V. Sanjeev is Sanjeev, son of Vidvan from Kokradi. Is this right? Where does north become south? When are initials used as opposed to full names? And is it true that some people in the North no longer use caste-related surnames?
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In the south, among Hindus, the predominant way of naming is as follows: name of the village, followed by name of the father and then the given name. this has been the tradition. Some folks, like Iyers and Iyengars and sub-sects within them like the Thathachars add these as additional parts of the name after the given name. So you can see a name like Lalgudi G Jayaram Iyer and so on. However, since your main question is - how doe these names work these days! so let me share what is happening now. People tend to drop the first initial which is for the name of the village and retain only the father's name as the initial and follow this with their own given name. In the last 20-40 years, among the modern families, even that is changing further. They have their own given name first, drop the initials altogether and retain the father's name as the last name; this works especially for women and when they get married, they drop the father's name and instead add the last name as the first name of the spouse. Where does north become south - interesting question; i guess, you will find the practice as north as the original "Madras presidency" which extended upto parts of the current Andhra Pradesh as well as parts of the current Karnataka. Of course, with so much of migration of families, and urbanisation, you wont clearly see such a pattern anymore. Initials when? as explained, people tend to use initials mainly to represent the village and father's name. some variations of course can be seen. e.g. when they just want to be known as Iyers or Iyengars etc. Do people in North no longer use caste-related surnames? yes, this is happening, but is not restricted to north, it also is a feature in the south. You must have seen the latest news reports about the surnames of "singhs" and "kaurs" as being an issue with immigration authorities in Canada. There are many factors, and these will add new dimensions to the whole naming conventions not only in India, but also of Indians elsewhere!
