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