Life Goals and Surnames

 Are your life goals determined by your surname? 

At least in India, these are my hypotheses-

Agarwals want to own a Sweet shop.

Bansals want to do a flip-flop, or start a Flipkart. 

Sonis want to strike Gold, in what they do.

Burmans want to either go into music or Ayurvedic medicine, like Dabur.

Patels want to own motels- in the U.S.

Singhs from Punjab want a Canadian citizenship.

Dash-es want to be dashing cops.

Jhas want to make pickles branded as Jhaji.

Bannerjees want to carry banners and protest.

Boses want to add an 's' and become bosses.

Deys want to be knighted.

South Indians usually have no surnames, so either they are goal-less, or have the same goals. In case of Andhra/Telangana, the goal is to settle in the U.S. and maybe in Kerala, to get a job in the Gulf. 

Names and Places

Vidisha is the first that comes to mind-she was a student at IMT Ghaziabad. The place is in M.P. Rewa is another, she was my student at Indore. Om Shivpuri was an actor, and Shivpuri is in M.P. too.

Javagal Srinath comes from Javagal, Salil Ankola from Ankola, and A.K. Hangal from Hangal. Deepika and her illustrious dad from Padukone (Guru Dutt too, though he did not use the last name). These are places in Karnataka. Bezawada Gopala Reddy and Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu were prominent people from Andhra, and bore the place names of Bezawada (Viijayawada's earlier avatar), and Tangutur.

Of course, most kars are from the place that precedes the kar. Belagaumkar, Hublikar, Nargundkar, Dharwadkar are some examples. Some people don't use the kar, so you find a Nargund as a surname too.

A Savant may be from Savantwadi. (We had one at Kirloskar Institute, Ameet). I think C.K. Prahalad, the management guru derives the C from Coimbatore.

Names Derived From Places

We have a lot of names or surnames derived from places. An example- my surname is derived from a small town called Nargund in Karnataka. Javagal is a town in Karnataka, and so is Padukone. This (adding a 'kar' after the name of a place to create a surname) is a common practice in Maharashtra- so you have Solapurkars, Chalisgaonkars, and Punekars.

Atal Behari Vajpayee may or may not have been from Bihar, but maybe S.H. Bihari, the lyricist was. Lyricists have this trend among them of naming themselves after their place- Sahir Ludhianvi, Rahat Indori, and Hasrat Jaipuri are examples.

In Andhra, where I grew up, the village name is used as an initial, if not the family name-sometimes both are initials.

You could call this the game of the name.

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.

The Sharmas and Srivastavas (and Sinhas) in my Life

There are a lot of Sharmas, Srivastavas and Sinhas in my life- and have been. I have no idea why, but my closest pal in engineering college was Alok Srivastava, in Hyderabad. He and I hung around together, wrote the CAT and GRE together (actually he was the type who wore jeans in 1977, when we desi types did not know how to spell Levi’s), and went on to get a Ph.D. from the same place in the US-Clemson. It was all his fault. Anyway, he was a gem of a guy, and I feel sorry that he didn’t live longer-sorry for myself.

Then, there have been a disproportionately large number of colleagues, students and acquaintances with these surnames. Some I remember particularly vividly (hey, I haven’t lost it yet). I currently have an assistant whose surname happens to be Sharma. She has been a great help with the mundane aspects of teaching, such as grading, and technology interface. At IMT Nagpur, where I spent considerable amounts of time post (my turning) 50, I have had lots of students and a colleague named (Jitendra) Sharma. And a talented writer, Tanya Shrivastava, and a talented facebooker, Rohit, of the same clan.

Also some Sinhas. One is a budding photographer called Anuja who works in Chennai now, and another-Meghna- who I came to know as a blogger-student first, and has since moved to a corporate job in Delhi. Farther back in time, my childhood buddy and classmate was Sanjay Sinha (also called Tingu) in classes 5 and 6.

The only other categories of names that I have encountered more often in my life are the Srinivases. There were five in my engineering class of 60, so they were recognised by their roll numbers. So, I guess I owe a lot to all these people. The number of Guptas and Agarwals is mind-boggling, so I shall deal with them when I am less boggled. Also, a small number of Iyers- all that for another day.

Celebrities and Surnames- A Correlation Study

What are the chances of your becoming a celebrity with the surname Mishra? Gurnani? Gopalan? Almost zero. But a Kapoor in your surname would increase your chances by a million times. A Khan in your last name, by a zillion times (Saif and Irrfan in addition to the triumvirate).

Celebrity-hood sits as easily on a non-Khan too. Not convinced? Khan (Na) is a powerful surname, shared by the first 'superstar' Rajesh and then Vinod, and his son Akshaye. (Sur)name yourself Raman, and you may become the big boss of Physics or Maths, but a name like Padukone would catapult you into the big league of Badminton or Bollywood.

Some other powerful surnames are Bhosle, Bachchan, Kumar (Manoj, Rajendra "jubilee" Kumar, "jaani" Raj Kumar, and my all time favourite Kishore), Burman, Dutt, Mehra, Desai, Parekh, Roshan, Samanta (the producer-director), Rai (both the Northern and the Mangalorean versions), Shah (Kundan directed Jaane Bhi do Yaaro, the cult comedy), Kher, Bajpai, Sharma (Kapil is my favourite comic)

Saving the best for the last- the legend Tendulkar, and the biggest of all, Gaekwad. Why? That's the real surname of Rajnikanth.