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Guild of One-Name Studies

One-name studies, Genealogy

Is your surname here?

    • 2,524 members
    • 2,297 studies
    • 8,188 surnames

New surnames

Immigrant surnames

This table shows the top fifty new immigrant surnames as shown in the 1998 Electoral Rolls:

Surname Culture Count Rank
Patel Indian 88,110 43
Begum Muslim 43,635 112
Khan Muslim 43,460 113
Singh Indian 40,119 129
Hussain Muslim 35,833 146
Ali Muslim 34,599 156
Kaur Indian 33,892 160
Ahmed Muslim 29,358 197
Shah Muslim 23,197 263
Akhtar Muslim 16,910 387
Bibi Muslim 16,348 404
Miah Muslim 14,161 464
Mistry Indian 11,407 587
Rahman Muslim 9,926 675
Wong Chinese 9.052 753
Iqbal Muslim 9,015 755
Chan Chi/Viet 8,804 784
Mohammed Muslim 8,555 806
Mahmood Muslim 8,494 812
Malik Muslim* 8,328 830
Sharma Indian 7,447 949
Bi Chinese 7,416 992
Uddin Muslim 6,682 1055
Ahmad Muslim 5,852 1201
Hassan Muslim 5,764 1222
Parmar Indian 5,549 1271
Rashid Muslim 5,391 1307
Choudhury Indian 5,300 1328
Cheung Chinese 5010 1406
Islam Muslim 4843 1449
Kumar Indian 4,648 1512
Chauhan Indian 4,571 1532
Chowdhury Indian 4,232 1654
Aslam Muslim 3,865 1813
Parveen Indian 3,573 1967
Bashir Muslim 3,525 1982
Sheikh Muslim 3,521 1986
Ullah Muslim 3,499 1996
Ho Korean 3,474 2007
Johal Sikh* 3,451 2024
Sidhu Sikh* 3,436 2031
Aziz Muslim 3,387 2055
Tang Chinese 3,378 2062
Li Chinese 3,371 2067
Lau Chinese 3,329 2090
Zaman Muslim 3,299 2106
Qureshi Arabic 3,292 2111
Lam Chinese 3,217 2160
Joshi Indian 3,161 2194
Bhatti Indian 3,129 2221

This is a shortened version of table 8 that appears in Ken Tucker’s “The forenames and surnames from the GB 1998 Electoral Roll compared with those from the UK 1881 Census”, Nomina 27, 2004, pp24-26. Ken denotes a new immigrant surname as ” loosely defined as a surname from Africa, India, Asia or the Caribbean and would include Muslim, Indian, Sikh, Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Vietnamese.” [The ‘Rank’ column I presume gives the rank amongst all UK surnames – MS]

Tucker highlights an anomaly in the above table – the existence of honorifics which are being used (or perhaps misinterpreted) as surnames. Begum and Bibi are in fact terms of respect for Muslim and Sikh women respectively, whilst Kaur is a Sikh appendix denoting gender (the female equivalent of Singh). Is this the result of an error of understanding, either by the compilers of the Electoral Rolls, or those who completed the register? Or have families adopted an honorific as a family name? The differential sizes of Begum and Bibi are perhaps instructive, and not due to chance. The majority of the given names listed against Bibi are female, it is true, but enough are male to suggest that something interesting is happening. Likewise is the given name Mohammed or Mohamed or Mohammad being pressed into service as a surname (and thus explaining the variants)?

There are some variants in the above table that may be forced or unforced anglicisations, resulting in a far higher combined rank:

  • Ahmed/Ahmad 35,210
  • Choudhury/Chowdhury 9,532
  • Mohammed/Mohamed/Mohammad 13,203

Hindu last names

(In Jan 2005 I knew very little about this subject, and not much more now. What follows is a summary of my reading to date, whichmay be error-prone.)

What follows is intended as a background to the study of Hindu names in Britain. Indians do not usually have family names in the western sense of a family-specific hereditary name. Rather an individual’s name could be formed from caste names, place-names, father’s personal name, such that brother’s might have totally different names.

Nonetheless, a Hindu name can still reveal clues to regionality and cultural/social standing.

Early anglicisation

Indian personal names had to adapt to the expectations of the British colonial system which required a western style name for its recording systems. Southern Indians in particular had to modify their name patterns. The southern Indian names were typically either just a personal name or a combination of elements:

Native village Father’s given name Own Given name Caste title Anglicisation
Alladi Chinasami Ramasami Iyer A.C.R. Iyer

This anglicisation through initialisation is also a feature of Chinese names in Singapore. (For example, the academic Peter Tan Kok Wan writes as Peter K.W.Tan ). However initialisation does not necessarily equate to anglicisation. Tamil Hindus have long forenames, which are often abbreviated for both oral and written usage.

Indian personal names such as “Rasheed, Krish(n)a, and Govind, and surnames such as Khan, Mathur and Iyer convey a person’s religious, linguistic, caste, sub-caste, clan and even lineage affiliations.” The parts of a name can identify one’s religion and, for a Hindu personal or surname, whether it derives from northern or southern India.

Northern Surnames Pandit, Patawardhan, Gaviskar, Mathur, Saksena, Shah
Southern Personal names Jayaraman, Najalingappa, Govindan, Krishnan

Varna System and names : Castes and names

These are the four social orders of Hindu society, dating back to the Aryan invasion of N India:

Varna Group traditionally-associated name non-traditionally associated names
Brahmin Scholars/Priests Sharma (esp in N India) Mishra, Pandey, Pandit, Sastri
Kshatriya Warriors and rulers Varma Singh (used by the Hindu Rajputs- a warrior race from NW India) as well as the Sikh of Panjab)
Vaishya Traders Gupta Goel, Agarwal
Shudra Landless labourers Das  

The Varna still provide a hierarchal framework for the castes and sub-castes. [The link between the Varna system and the caste system is a matter of debate in India today. The most one can say is that the caste system may be based on the historical Varna system. MS.] However the number of castes and sub-castes run into thousands. A sub-caste will be a smaller group, endogamous and associated with a region.

Names derived from the caste system are extremely numerous. Examples are:

Last name Caste/sub-caste Region
Pandit Brahmins Jammu/Kashmir
Khatri, Aurora Hindu/Sikh trading castes Panjab
Mathur, Saksena Kayastha Uttar Pradesh
Khandelwhal, Oswal Banias/Marwaris N India
Kamath, Shenoy Konkani Brahmin  

Some Name-endings:

-erji Mukherji, Banerji, Chatterji anglicised versions of Mukhopadhyaya, Bandopadhyaya, Chattopadhyaya
-Kar Gavaskar, Tendulkar In Maharashtra many family names are derived by attaching a “kar” to the the place of origin

Geodeomographers have found that Indians who have assimilated well into British society tend to have very different family names from those who migrated from rural areas, often directly into ethnic clusters. Harrow and Brent are two London boroughs which are typical of these ‘Asian Enterprise’ surnames. These are areas with one of the highest readership level of The Financial Times and Time magazine. (Source: Webber, 2004)

Examples of Hindu surnames:

nbsp; ER rank   ER rank   ER rank
Advani Iyer Raja 2740
Agarwal Kulkarni Rampgovind
Aivar Malhotra Rae
Amin Mashrenwala Rege
Ashar Mehta Roy
Badheka Mistry 587 Sethi
Bhalia Modi Shah
Bose More Sharma 949
Chatterjee ukherjee Shukla
Chinei Munshi Soni
Chopra Natwani Suktankar
Das Nayvar Tagore
Desai 2366 Naidoo Tandon
Desphande Parekh 3608 Taylor
Dholakia Patel 43
Gaikwad Prabhu
Gupta or Gupte Pradhan

Sources:

This section relies heavily on:-

  • Jayaraman, R, “Personal identity in a Globalized World: Cultural roots of Hindu personal names and surnames”, Journal of Popular Culture 38(3) 2005
  • Tan, Peter K.W., “Englishised names?: an analysis of naming patterns among ethnic Chinese Singaporeans”, English Today 17(4) Oct 2001
  • Tucker, K., “The forenames and surnames from the GB 1998 Electoral Roll compared with those from the UK 1881 Census”, Nomina 27 (2004) pp24-26
  • Webber R., “Designing geodemographic classifications to meet contemporary business needs”, Interactive Marketing 5(3) (2004) p 234

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