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Everything you wanted to know about Indian baby names, meanings, traditions & more |
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 How Indian parents give their children first/personal names
There are two main contributors that help Indians develop a name for their child: geographical region and religion. Indian names typically have significant meaning as parents give a great deal of thought in what they name their children. Indians frequently have more than one name, including ancestral names, ‘class’ names distinguished by things such as hereditary rank, profession, or wealth (also known as ‘caste’) to name a few.
Hinduism is the most frequent religion in India (Over 80% of Indians are Hindus while over 10% of Indians are Muslim). Because Hindus believe in reincarnation (rebirth of the soul in another body or form), Hindus often use ancestral names allowing family members to be ‘reborn’ within their children.
The ceremony in which traditional Hindus name the baby is called the ‘Namkaran’. ‘Nama’ means 'name', and ‘karana’ means 'to make'. The Namakaran typically takes place on the tenth or twelfth day after the child is born. It can take place at home or in a temple, and friends/family usually celebrate with the family, as this is a festive occasion.
The puja (Puja: the act of showing reverence to a god, a spirit, or another aspect of the divine through invocations, prayers, songs, and rituals) involves the child, priest, father, mother, and sometimes the paternal grandmother. It begins by the mother covering the child in a new cloth. She wets the child's head with water, symbolically bathing him, and gives the child to the father (or the paternal grandmother). Next, the priest invokes the blessings of Agni, the planetary bodies, and other gods.
The Paddhatis, however, say the father should lean towards the child's right ear. Holding a betel leaf near the ear, he should whisper four times the name of the child.
as is Indian tradtion.
Then Brahmins (member of the Hindu priestly caste, the highest in the Hindu caste system) invited for the occasion, bless the child. To close the ceremony, gifts are given to the relatives and Brahmins.
According to the Rig-Veda (The Rig Veda is a collection of hymns counted among the four Hindu religious scriptures known as the Vedas), a child of either sex should be given four names:
- The nakshatra name: This is given according to the constellation, or nakshatra, (There are 27 nakshatras referring to the Moon was situated when you were born. It is thought one can take advantage of certain opportunities and/or ward off the negatives by interpreting your nakshatra). This name is fundamentally connected to the baby, and is kept to protect the child from those who may wish to do the child harm.
- The second name given to the child is based on the deity of the month the child was born (A Hindu deity, god/goddess; represents a particular aspect of the Supreme Being).
- The third name given to the baby is after the name of the family deity. Those naming a baby after the family deity do so to give the child special protection of the deity. It is given to protect the child from evil.
- The last name given to a baby is the popular name. The name depends on the culture and education of the family.
According to the Grihyasutras (The Grihyasutras deal with household ceremonies or other rites performed with the domestic in daily life), there are five requisites to naming a child:
1. The baby’s name should be easy to pronounce and sound pleasant.
2. The name should contain a specified number of syllables and vowels.
3. The name should indicate the sex of the baby.
4. The baby' name should signify wealth, fame or power.
5. The name should be suggestive of the caste of the family
Over time, modern Indian families in metro areas and larger cities have begun to select baby names from other cultures, and other countries. As more families begin to consider non-traditional names, they are continuing to choose names with special meanings and/or attributes
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India
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For more details on this topic, see Indian family name.
Indian surnames, where formalized, fall into seven general types. And people from Southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala do not have any formal surnames.
- Patronymics and Ancestry, where the father's name or an ancester's given name is used in its original form or in a derived form (e.g. Aggarwal or Agrawal or Agrawala derived from the ancestor Agrasen).
- Occupations ( Chaudhury, Patel or Patil meaning Village Headman, Gandhi, Kulkarni, Kapadia, Nadkarni, Patwardhan, Patwari, Chamar) and priestly distinctions (Trivedi, Chaturvedi, Twivedi, Purohit, Bhattar, Mukhopadhyay.) Businesspeople: Shah. In addition many Parsi, Bohra and Gujarati families have used English trade names as last names since the 18th and 19th centuries (Contractor, Engineer, Builder).
- Caste or clan names (Gaudar, Vaish, Parmar, Kamma, Sindhi).
- Place names or names derived from places of ancestral origin (Marwari, Gawaskar, Mangeshkar, Kapoor, Karnad).
- Muslim surnames, generally following the same rules used in Pakistan. Khan among the most popular, often signifying Afghan/Central Asian descent.
- Bestowed titles or other honorifics (titles bestowed by Kings, Nawabs and other nobles before British Raj (Wali, Rai, Rao) and those bestowed by the British (Rai, Bahadur). In Bengal, it is also common custom to create hybrid surnames based on the previous last names and new titles (Raichoudhury)
- Names indicating nobility or feudal associations or honorifics (Varma, Singh, Burman, Raja, Tagore, Thakur)
- Colonial Surnames forced on natives based on tax or after religious conversion, particularly in Goa which was under Portuguese control (DeCruz, Pinto). Often, surnames of Portugene noble families were used as the surnames of the converted.
The convention is to write the first name followed by middle names and surname. It is common to use the father's first name as the middle name even though it is not universal. In some Indian states like Maharashtra, official documents list the family name first, followed by a comma and the given names.
It is customary for wives to take the surname of their husband after marriage. In modern times, in urban areas at least, this practice is not universal. In some rural areas, particularly in North India, wives may also take a new first name after their nupitals. Children inherit their surnames from their father.
In some parts of Southern India, no formal Surname is used, either because none is designated or because the family has decided to forgo its existing clan name. This practice is prevalent in Tamil Nadu and Kerala where someone who belongs to the Nair (a corruption of "Nyakar" pointing to a warrior past) clan for example, could forgo its usage completely in modern times, preferring just to use the initials of the father, ancestral village or "house" instead. An example of this usage is the name of olympian P. T. Usha (Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha, where the first name indicates the geographical origin and the second is the name of her "house"). Wife or child takes the given name of the husband or father (Usha married Satish, and may therefore be called Usha Satish or simply S. Usha).
Sikhs generally use the words Singh ("lion") and Kaur ("princess") as surnames added to the otherwise unisex first names of men and women, respectively. It is also common to use a different surname after Singh in which case Singh or Kaur are used as middle names (Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Surinder Kaur Badal). In modern times, many Sikh women also use "Singh" as their last name following the western concept of patronymic or marital inheritance (Surinder K. Singh). Other middle names or honorifics that are sometimes used as surnames include Kumar, Dev, Lal, and Chand.
The modern day spellings of names originated when families translated their surnames to English, with no standardization across the country. Variations are regional, based on how the name was translated from the local language to English in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries during British rule. Therefore, it is understood in the local traditions that Agrawal and Aggarwal represent the same name derived from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab respectively. Similarly, Tagore derives from Bengal while Thakur is from Hindi-speaking areas. The officially-recorded spellings tended to become the standard for that family. In the modern times, some states have attempted at standardization, particularly where the surnames were corrupted because of the early British insistence of shortening them for convinience. Thus Bandopadhyay became Banerji, Mukhopadhay became Mukherji, Chattopadhyay became Chatterji etc. This coupled with various other spelling variations created several surnames based on the original surnames. The West Bengal Government now insists on re-converting all the variations to their original form when the child is enrolled in school.
Some parts of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia have similar patronymic customs as that of India.
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