What is in a surname

A young woman, a new joinee at a public sector organisation in Jharkhand introduced herself as “Rekha” during her first meeting with the manager. When the manager wanted to know her full name she once again replied “Rekha”. After further probing she said “Rekha Chatterjee”. The manager was curious as to why she had not mentioned her surname in the first place. She informed him that she had stopped using the family name for ages .Her father had changed her name while she was in school. Since they belonged to the Brahmin community their family lived under fear of facing discrimination in various spheres of life. Life was difficult for Brahmins and other upper caste people in the state.The manager was from Bengal and had recently joined that office on transfer. It was a revelation to him to witness a situation of reverse persecution in India .He gradually discovered that in Jharkhand and several adjoining areas many people from the dominant community were not using surnames which apparently carried a stigma in wider social spheres. Names came with a neutral “Kumar” or “Kumari” tagged to them. However these people were not averse to accepting the special privileges offered by the government which gave them easy access to lucrative government jobs and other facilities. So both the upper and lower castes did not want their surnames.

I remember , long back a family friend of ours had changed his surname to a generic surname “Ray” because he felt his family name was not fit to be used publicly. In fact all his siblings followed suit.  Many Brahmin/upper caste families are still very allergic to certain surnames, specially if there are old people around in the house. Very recently I heard a middle aged man say that he had defiled his wife, who came from an upper caste family, by marrying her.  In Bengal the situation is slightly different in urban communities specially amongst the younger generation. Many of them nowadays are unable to identify castes by surnames. In fact recently I met two kids, brothers with a double surname “Ghosh Banerjee” representing two separate castes. Usually we find married women using such surnames either by choice or by compulsion. For me it was difficult to figure out the family lineage of the kids – was it their father’s/mother’s surname or was this a combination of  both?

 And finally an ex-colleague of mine changed his surname on his girlfriend’s advice. However once they were married and settled happily they wanted their old surname back .So they went through the process all over again and got their original surname reinstated