[ANSTHRLD] Indian anyone?

[Jennifer Smith]

Both Magnus and I have some Indian-subcontinent sources.

The biggest hurdle is picking a *place* -- saying you want an Indian name is
nearly the same as saying you want a European name... Great, but which
language/area? 

The "easier" part of doing Indian is that if you stick to Sanskrit-derived
names you're fairly safe for all Hindu parts and times. Keep in mind that
pretty much the entire northern half of the subcontinent was Muslim (more or
less from Persia) for a good chunk of period (particularly the ruling
class), and so that's always an option too. 

Of course there's always the route Magnus took for his alternate persona
name, which is Portuguese. They had a pretty good foothold in SW India well
in period.

The biggest thing to keep in mind when doing a Hindu name is that they did
not have regular surnames as we think of them. Depending on area, you see
patronymics, locatives, and some descriptives, but all of those are also
used as given names too. There were class/caste names, but they usually
weren't recorded in records as far as I can tell, and/or they too were just
a common pool of names (both "given" and "surname") that were in use by a
given caste. Most commonly names were a compound name (made up of two or
more words in a certain pattern), that could just as easily be split to be
written as two separate names.

For example, there is a historical king Chandragupta.  This is obviously the
name Chandra ("moon") and Gupta ("protector", generally only seen as a
suffix/second name). It is sometimes written as Chandra Gupta. 

<Surabhi> below is probably a good name for a woman, since it means
"fragrant", like a flower. Floral and other similar nature names were always
popular for women. I have no idea what <Lakhia> comes from, although a brief
google search suggests a modern south Indian name, which means it's probably
NOT Sanskrit-derived. Which isn't a show-stopper, of course, just she needs
to find evidence of its use in period.

There is a wee bit of information on South Indian names on S-Gabriel, as I
recall.

-Emma


> -----Original Message-----
> From: heralds-bounces+jds=randomgang.com at ansteorra.org 
> [mailto:heralds-bounces+jds=randomgang.com at ansteorra.org] On 
> Behalf Of robert segrest
> Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 10:43 PM
> To: heralds at ansteorra.org
> Subject: [ANSTHRLD] Indian anyone?
> 
> I have a client who wants to work on an Indian
> persona.  She has is recently returned and has
> registered a European name and device before, so she
> isn't entirely ignorant of the process, but she
> doesn't seem to know much about Indian cultures, and I
> know just enough to know how little I know.
> 
> Does anyone know of good sources for Indian (that's
> the subcontinent) naming practices in period that I
> might be able to find?  I'm still working on getting
> details like time period, specific culture, etc.  She
> has a proposed name of Surabhi Lakhia, but she found
> both elements in modern sources.  Given name from a
> Hindi website (unspecified), last name is that of a
> dancer who has a website.  So whose my Hindi guru?
> 
> Laszlo
> 
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