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Common Surnames in India Posted by on Feb 25, 2012 in Hindi Language

You might have seen or heard several Indian surnames and would have thought about it. What words could be used as surnames in India? Which region prefer what surnames in India? and so on.

Let’s me show you some of the common surnames as per the region. You can use these surnames to guess about people from which region they came from or about their family origins.

Common Surnames in North India (Delhi, Haryana, Punjab,etc)

शर्मा – Sharma
भट – Bhat
वर्मा – Verma
कुमार – Kumar
गुप्ता – Gupta
मल्होत्रा – Malhotra
भटनागर- Bhatnagar
सक्सेना – Saxena
कपूर – Kapoor, Kapur
सिंह – Singh
महरा – Mehra
चोपरा – Chopra
सरीन – Sarin
मालिक – Malik
सैनी – Saini
जैन – Jain
कौल – Kaul
खत्री – Khatri
गोयल – Goel or Goyal
तिवारी – Tiwari
भरद्वाज – Bharadwaj
चोपरा – Chopra
प्रसाद – Prasad
आचार्य – Acharya
अगरवाल – Agarwal
अहलूवालिया – Ahluwalia
टंडन – Tandon
आहूजा – Ahuja
अरोरा – Arora

Common Surnames in East India: (Bengal, Orrisa, etc.)

चटर्जी – Chatterjee
चतुर्वेदी – Chaturvedi
सेन – Sen
बोस – Bose
सेनगुप्ता – Sengupta
दास – Das
दासगुप्ता – Dasgupta
मुख़र्जी – Mukherjee
दुत्ता – Dutta
बनर्जी – Banerjee
चक्रवर्ती – Chakraborty
भट्टाचार्य – Bhattacharya
घोष – Ghosh
मित्रा – Mitra
गुहा – Guha
सरकार – Sarkar
साहा – Saha
रॉय – Roy
चोधरी – Chowdhury
रॉय चौधरी – Roy Chowdhury
मजूमदार – Mazumdar
मंडल – Mandal
मैती – Maity
कलिता – Kalita
हजारिका – Hazarika
नाथ – Nath
बुरुाह – Buruah
थापा – Thapa
गुरुंग – Gurung
राय – Rai
प्रधान – Pradhan
तमांग – Tamang
छेत्री – Chettri

Common Surnames in South India (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, etc.)

नायर – Nair or Nayar
मेनन – Menon
पिल्लई – Pillai
वेंकटएसन – Venkatesan
बलासुब्रमानियम – Balasubramanium
राव – Rao
जयरामन – Jayaraman
सुब्रमण्यम – Subramaniam
रंगन – Rangan
रंगराजन – Rangarajan
नारायण – Narayan
रेड्डी – Reddy

Common Surnames in Central India (Bihar/ Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, etc)

सिंह – Singh
द्विवेदी – Dwivedi
मिश्रा – Mishra
त्रिवेदी – Trivedi
झा – Jha
शुक्ला – Shukla
यादव – Yadav
सिन्हा – Sinha
पाण्डेय – Pandey
झादव – Jhadav
जेटली – Jaiteley
चौहान – Chauhan
जोशी – Joshi
मिस्त्री – Mistry
खान – Khan
श्रीवास्तव – Srivastva

Common Surnames in West India (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa etc)

शाह – Shah
देशपांडे – Deshpande
गावडे – Gavde
कदम – Kadam
ताम्बे – Tambe
मेहता – Mehta
पटेल – Patel
पाटिल – Patil
पवार – Pawar or Powar
चवन – Chavan
डी’सोउज़ा – D’souza,
लोबो – Lobo
रोद्रिगुएस – Rodrigues,
डी’कोस्टा – D’Costa

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About the Author: Nitin Kumar

Nitin Kumar is a native Hindi speaker from New Delhi, India. His education qualification include Masters in Robotics and Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. Currently, he is working in the Research and Development in Robotics in Germany. He is avid language learner with varied level of proficiency in English, German, Spanish, and Japanese. He wish to learn French one day. His passion for languages motivated him to share his mother tongue, Hindi, and culture and traditions associated with its speakers. He has been working with Transparent Language since 2010 and has written over 430 blogs on various topics on Hindi language and India, its culture and traditions. He is also the Administrator for Hindi Facebook page which has a community of over 330,000 members.


Comments:

  1. Diann Lee:

    I have heard ‘Khan’ many time 🙂 ‘Bangar’ is not common? :p

  2. Shubho:

    Some inaccuracies or slight errors for Eastern sector:

    Chatterjee is same as Chatopadhayay (just anglicized version)

    Same for Mukherjee (MUkhopadhayay), Banerjee (Bandopadhyay) and Ganguly (Gangopadhayay)

    Similarly Tagore is really an anglicized version of Thakur. But it is not common at all. The same for Chaturvedi.

    Instead some common surnames you missed are: Chakraborty, Bhattacharya, Ghosh, Mitra, Guha, Sarkar, Saha, Roy,Chowdhury, Roy Chowdhury, Mazumdar, Mandal and Maity.

    In Assam, the common titles I can think of are:
    Kalita, Hazarika, Nath and Buruah.

    In the north of WB, there is a Nepali dominated region. Nepalis are also found in Megahlaya, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh besides in the Dooars right into Bhutan.

    Some common titles are:
    Thapa, Gurung, Rai, Pradhan, Tamang and Chettri.

    • Nitin Kumar:

      @Shubho Namaste Submitraji,
      Thanks for your valuable information and pointing out the inaccuracies! I have made the corrections and added the new information to the post.
      Thank you very much again!
      Regards, Nitin

  3. Anu:

    These are coastal karnataka sur names

    Rai
    Bhat
    Bunt
    Kamat
    Shetty
    Pai
    Hegde

    These are a couple kodava surnames (You’ll find many more)
    Ponnappa
    Poovaiah

    In North karnataka, you’ll find these sur names
    Deshpande
    Dixit
    Joshi
    kulkarni