What’s in a Surname ?
Friends,
The surname is a label that you inherit at birth to proclaim your family proprietorship and vice’ versa. It is always shared with the other members in the family and is passed down by men from one generation to the next. Women, however, generally adopt the husband’s family name once they are married.
The surname serves as your unique “identification mark” to distinguish you from others having the same first name as yours. In the early days of civilization, much before the present population explosion, one’s first name was perhaps enough to identify a person; that was until 5000 years ago when it became necessary to append the family name(or the surname, as it is now called) after the first name. Thus, mythological characters or historical figures like Ram or Shivaji are known, to this day, only by their first names ---- not as Ramchandra Ayodhyekar/Raghuvanshi or Shivajiraje Bhosle! I came to know that Shivaji was a “Bhosle” only recently, after I saw a film with that name!! The surnames have been used mainly to sort out families according to their caste (Iyer,Iyengar,Menon, Nair, Pillai, Sharma,Shetty), their village or place of origin (Aurangabadkar, Kundapur, Punekar, Tirunellai), their official rank (Deshmukh, Gowda, Havaldar, Hegade, Inamdar,Major, Patil, Shenoy, Subedar) and their trade or profession (Abhisheki, Bhat, Contractor, Daruwala,Engineer,Joshi,Kulkarni, Merchant, Mistry, Smith, Taylor, Tyler and Vaidya).
Sometimes, it is your complexion(Black,Brown,Dhawale,Goray,Kale,White) or a personal trait (Armstrong, Chatterji, Gabale,Godbole,Longfellow,Shahane,Takale,Young) that decides your family name, which may sometimes refer even to a natural element (Lokhande,Maniratnam,Pitale,Steele,Tambe). If the surname is too long or unwieldy or just too funny, then you tend to hide it behind an initial (T.N.Seshan,P.Ashwini Kumar, D.K.Lal). Some women, especially the modern theatre personalities, are unwilling to give up their maiden name after marriage; so, they append it to the husband’s family name thus acquiring a “double-barrelled” surname (Dhumale-Joglekar, Firodia-Motwani, Saxena-Gupta, Rodham-Clinton, Kennedy-Onasis, Lloyd-George). In this process, you may end up with a funny combination such as McDonald-Berger, Sharpe-Payne or nearer home, Satyen-Khote, Lahiri –Lolla, Anand- Lele .
The surname serves as your unique “identification mark” to distinguish you from others having the same first name as yours. In the early days of civilization, much before the present population explosion, one’s first name was perhaps enough to identify a person; that was until 5000 years ago when it became necessary to append the family name(or the surname, as it is now called) after the first name. Thus, mythological characters or historical figures like Ram or Shivaji are known, to this day, only by their first names ---- not as Ramchandra Ayodhyekar/Raghuvanshi or Shivajiraje Bhosle! I came to know that Shivaji was a “Bhosle” only recently, after I saw a film with that name!! The surnames have been used mainly to sort out families according to their caste (Iyer,Iyengar,Menon, Nair, Pillai, Sharma,Shetty), their village or place of origin (Aurangabadkar, Kundapur, Punekar, Tirunellai), their official rank (Deshmukh, Gowda, Havaldar, Hegade, Inamdar,Major, Patil, Shenoy, Subedar) and their trade or profession (Abhisheki, Bhat, Contractor, Daruwala,Engineer,Joshi,Kulkarni, Merchant, Mistry, Smith, Taylor, Tyler and Vaidya).
Sometimes, it is your complexion(Black,Brown,Dhawale,Goray,Kale,White) or a personal trait (Armstrong, Chatterji, Gabale,Godbole,Longfellow,Shahane,Takale,Young) that decides your family name, which may sometimes refer even to a natural element (Lokhande,Maniratnam,Pitale,Steele,Tambe). If the surname is too long or unwieldy or just too funny, then you tend to hide it behind an initial (T.N.Seshan,P.Ashwini Kumar, D.K.Lal). Some women, especially the modern theatre personalities, are unwilling to give up their maiden name after marriage; so, they append it to the husband’s family name thus acquiring a “double-barrelled” surname (Dhumale-Joglekar, Firodia-Motwani, Saxena-Gupta, Rodham-Clinton, Kennedy-Onasis, Lloyd-George). In this process, you may end up with a funny combination such as McDonald-Berger, Sharpe-Payne or nearer home, Satyen-Khote, Lahiri –Lolla, Anand- Lele .
Man has always been curious to know about the origin and meaning of his surname. So, some people have carried out a systematic study of the etymology of the various surnames in use and this science is called, "onomastics” . In my very first post, I had tried my hand at the “structural analysis” of my own surname. In our community there are several surnames similar to mine e.g. Eid-angadi (Five Shops), Aar-angadi(Six Shops), Beltangadi (‘Jaggery’ Shop) and so on. So, I was happy with my interpretation of my surname. Now, an ex-colleague of mine from BARC, Dr. L. Madhav Rao writes to me that “ ……. By the way, your explanation of your surname as tenshops (hattu angadi) is, I am afraid, only partially correct- the angadi part, I mean. As you know, Hattangadi is a shortened form of the correct name of the village: Hattiangadi i.e. hatti-angadi. In Kannada there are hard and soft consonants and in the present case the consonants are hard (t and d). Hatti therefore means a shed ( a cowshed, a goat or sheepshed). In olden times, a part of the shed was often used as a small shop in small villages." My wife, Kumud, however, does not agree with any of the above explanations. She thinks that ‘Hattangadi’ is basically a Marathi word and it stands for ‘Hattam’(obstinacy) plus ‘gadi’(person), that is, an obstinate person, which makes a most befitting epithet for me!
Be that as it may, but, my surname has played a very significant role in my life as the following article, “The Importance of Being Hattangadi” will show. This is my first published article. I had written it originally sometime in 1985; but, I sent it for publication to ‘Kanara Saraswat’ magazine only in the year 2000, thanks to the constant encouragement I received from my friends like Mangesh and Kunda Kagal. Bye! Keep in touch.
…… Vasant Hattangadi
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