Surnames

Surnames (feminists may prefer to call them family names, as the sur may be considered a slur) are varied, and this is an incisive (!) analysis of my favourite ones.

Smith, or its variant, Psmith, used by Wodehouse. These also occur in various colours, like Black, but to the best of my knowledge, not Purple.

Sharma, which could be the Indian equivalent, as it is found in every corner; sometimes the 'h' goes into hiding (out of sharm?) and it turns into a Sarma.

Goodenough- if he's good enough for Priety Zinta, who am I to complain?

Patil, also comes with variants, usually prefixes such as Kolte or Butte..even Dangat.

Suzuki, a family name that changed the way families in India pereceived private transport. Used to be driven by another surname, (Hamara) Bajaj. Wheels within wheels, did you say?

Bandookwala, with its cousins Jalnawala, Sodabottleopenerwala, Screwwala, ...

Karmarkar which is literally Do-die-do if you split it up.

Walker, which is the name assumed by The Phantom when he walks the streets of town like an ordinary man..

Some names trigger dialogues. The name Jain reminds me of the Tarzan dialogue- Me, Tarzan. You, Jane. Some rare ones I have come across are Mulky, Jharkharia, Beri, and not so rare ones are Sinha, Mahapatra, Rastogi, S(h)rivastava, Verma, Yadav, Chauhan/Chavan, Deshpande, Chaudhary/Chowdhury, Menon, Gupta,.. my own surname is pretty rare, research has shown.

Naming Kids and More

How do people name kids? Kings had it easy, as in just repeat the name with a roman numeral to prove that you could count, until a coup removed the last-mentioned numeral from the throne.

Why I was called Rajendra is that a great man turned into our first President, and his name was Rajendra Prasad. We had a brainwave about Prarthana (our first) and were influenced by film stars Pooja (Bhatt and Batra) for our second.

Many surnames emerged from professions- worldwide. What inspires people to still retain a name like Smith I cannot fathom. I like Wodehouse's Psmith idea, for its use of the differentiation strategy. I also like the U.P. style of renaming your surnames or not using them (sometimes to hide your caste)- free-for-all, in other words, like the state itself seems to be.

The feminist version of not changing surnames after marriage is fine, but may lead to confusion about the family tree. Though if there are no trees, families may vanish in due course, so it might not be that important in the longish run.

The weirdest (sur)name I have encountered is 'Cabinetmaker' ; combined with the first name Armaity, even more so.