Shelly, To add one’s paternal grandparent’s name is a …

Comment posted Names, Middle Names and Last Names among the Syrian Christians by Jackson.

Shelly,

To add one’s paternal grandparent’s name is a community tradition and atleast today, this name is limited to, as a baptismal name (palliperu) for church records. Children are given another name for other purposes keeping the grandparents name in church records and still preserving the tradition.

Since we have this option of having both ‘baptismal name’ and ‘given name’ it shouldn’t be a big problem nor carry any marks of boredom or confusion. We can always be innovative and still preserve originality.

And as u have said nowadays family names have been omitted. There is a reason for this in many cases. For those residing/settled outside Kerala it is better we avoid adding the family name.

From my personal case, I earlier had my family name added to my name for all purposes here in Mumbai. Then most of the locals here including official documents, due to their negligence/non-understandability, generally make spelling mistakes in the family name as it’s difficult for them to pronounce or write exactly, which ultimately leads to a lot of legal hasles later… name changes, corrections, etc… I had faced this problem many times. Finally I opted to add my father’s name in place of surname.

Another thing u must note is, Nasranis don’t have a “surname” system as such, like there are surnames like Nair, Nambudiri, Menon, Khan, Sheikh, D’ Souza, Pinto, etc….. which indicates origins besides family. So our system of family name is different from the ‘surname system’.
Also note, nairs have a family name as well as the surname tag ‘Nair’ added to their name but we dont have anything like that !

We may probably think of adopting a common surname like “Nasrani” besides individual family names otherwise an arguement like “surname” for us is not justified by calling our family names as surnames

The concept of ‘surname’ is different outside Kerala though ‘family name’ sounds overlapping.

Related NSC Network Articles

• Familytree – Syrian Christians DNA Project Information
• Raja Thoma Villarvattam – King of the Nasranis
• Some of the traditions and rituals among the Syrian Christians of Kerala
• ‘The Syrian Christians of Kerala, Demographic and Socio-Economic Transition In The Twentieth Century’ by K. C. Zachariah
• ‘The Indian Christians of St. Thomas’ by Dr. Leslie Brown
• The Tiger and the Syrian Christians: Tipu Sultan’s ‘Padayottam’
• Lifestyle of Kerala Syrian Christians

(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)

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