In the olden times, Indians usually were not very cosmopolitan and hence the name and surname was very much in conjunction to the caste or religion of the person. David Gonsalves was Christian and Ritu Kapoor hailed from North. It was very remarkable that surnames also related to the occupation of the person. The carpenter craftsmen from the south are Achari and a Patil is usually a district leader from Maharashtra.
Maharashtrian surnames are very interesting like Tambe, Parelkar, Desai, Gupte, Raje, Rajeshrike, Godambe, Golab, Sule and Salunkhe. Girls also have a name change as per Maharshtian culture in addition to the change in the surname. Hence Maitri Kelkar becomes Sahana Mhatre after marriage and has to be affected via a legal affidavit and marriage certificate to update records.
Bengali names like Noyonika, Monjula, Kajol are easy to detect with Chatterjee, Mouly, Chaturvedi and also Mukherjee as a surname. The names like Debnath, Debabratha, Prabhadebi have a certain Bengali feel in them. A typical way of naming is also seen in the Sikh Punjabi culture where the name is unisexual and can be differentiated by Kaur for a girl and Singh for a male. Harminder on paper may seem a boy but can also be a lady but the following Kaur girl) or Singh (boy) is a true indication. The surnames like Bhamb, Kohli, Ghai are very much belonging to the Sikh tradition.
Gujarati names are easy to detect and seen transcending from generations. The surnames also are easy like Parmar, Sangoi, Desai, Mehta. Jain culture often retain their surname as Jain. Gujarati names are like Dhaval, Bhavisha, Hardik, Kamal, Hiten, Deepak, Viral, Bhavna and Vipul. The south Indian names remain distinguished like Kamakshi, Lakshmi, Vijayam, Jyotika, Ramaswamy. Surnames here are mostly Iyer, Iyengar, Menon, Pillai, Sharma, Nair, Namboodiri, Nambiar and Poduval.
Other surnames from North include Kapoor, Sharma, Grover. It is also seen a tradition to retain the gothra name which is another grouping in the sect. This is seen in surnames like Kaushik, Srivatsa, Gautam which is also a modern trend. Catholic names are easy to know and surnames are like Mathias, Varghese, Chacko from South and other general surnames include Dias, D’souza, D’Silva, Rodrigues, Rasquinha, Gomes and Pires.
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