What’s there in a (sur)name?
Posted by Lakshminarayanan on February 23, 2008
Have you ever got the feeling that you should have had a surname (if u r already not)? Have you ever had sleepless nights thinking about what could have been your surname if it was there? Have you ever thought about when rest of the world and rest of the fellow Indians are having surnames why Tamilians alone are deprived of surnames? I had all these questions while introspecting myself for answer…I never got this question arose, till I filled up my passport application where surname is one of the mandatory fields…the person who was sitting in front of me advised me to write my father’s name as my surname…that is where all the problems have started…
as per International standards, my name is already lengthy…added with my surname (my father’s name is Subramanian) it becomes impossible for any non-Indian to pronounce completely and correctly…’You’ve got such a big name!!!’, this was the comment I got in immigration counters, post office, bank, ticket counters and in almost all the places where I filled up my surname as my father’s name in all the countries I visited…I use to grin and tell ‘Yes!…I do…like most of my fellow Indians’…
if that was the case outside, inside the office it was even more worse…my client mail ID came like lakshminarayanan.subramanian@ABC.com which made almost all my friends to yell at me for having such a lengthy mail ID…all of my fellow Brit colleagues at the first instance were calling my father instead of calling me..even my manager, after telling him many times, use to address the mails to my father only…whenever I got a call from any one, the first question was always ‘Is it Mr.Subramanian?’…I don’t know how others who are facing this problem are feeling, but I feel terrible…
according to me, lacking a family name is such a serious concern…u lack ur identity…i dont think this is like this in Tamilnadu from the beginning…my grandpas, both paternal and maternal have had surnames…then why shouldn’t I?…this must have been some unscrupulous act by any of the Kazhagams(political parties in TN) ages back…they must have projected the surname as a symbol of caste and community and banned it while registering the names…ironically, the govt is making caste and community beliefs burgeoning with its non-sense reservation policies…
people from rest of India do have their community name as their surname still..so, are they having any caste or race or community related problems?…no, I don’t think so…on the other hand, no body is diffident to have their community or ancestral name as their family name…I have seen surnames like butcher, carpenter, cambridge, etc in UK…
so, what’s the solution for me?…I really can’t change my surname now as changing the name at this juncture is a rigmarole…I’ve to live the rest of my life with my father’s name as my surname…but I at least have to ensure that the next generation gets its identity, I mean their family name…what do you say?
|| SLN Blethers || 
Agni said
Like Vadivelu says in 23PK, “Oru puraavukku paoraa”, I was quite surprised to see this as a post topic but it was quite interesting indeed. But one basic thing is cross-cultural differences is where it becomes significant. In US for instance none calls me Mr.x instead they call me by my first name. That makes a world of difference! No matter what you do, you would be different in a portion of world where you don’t belong to!
Anonymous said
You can always have Iyer as your surname – one stop solution for such things & one which works very effectively
Lakshminarayanan S said
@yogaesh
may be when I come to US I think I can enjoy the great feeling of people calling me by first name :)…but even then don’t you feel you lack your family name when every one else does have?
Dhruva said
I am a north Indian, and I have completely different views from yours when you say “people from rest of India do have their community name as their surname still..so, are they having any caste or race or community related problems?…no, I don’t think so..”. I do see a lot of instances in day to day life where people use our surnames to relate it to a caste or race or community.. and that’s where I start feeling that when we all agree that caste-system does not make any sense today (it used to when it was representative of once occupation) , then why to keep a tag into people’s names even today.. I can only see one pros of having surnames which is an ease in identification when so many people can have same first names… however, I am sure one can easily find other eefective ways to keep their individual identities…. instead of opting for a surname which tags them to a particular caste or race or community…