Indian surname

Indian family names are based on a variety of systems and naming conventions, which vary from region to region. Names are also influenced by religion and caste and may come from epics. India's population speaks a wide variety of languages and nearly every major religion in the world has a following in India. This variety makes for subtle, often confusing, differences in names and naming styles. For example, the concept of a family name does not exist widely in Tamil Nadu.

For some Indians, their birth name is different from their official name; the birth name starts with a letter auspicious on the basis of the person's horoscope (based on the nakshatra or lunar mansion corresponding to the person's birth).

Many children are given three names, sometimes as a part of religious teaching.

Indian names, written in roman letters may use the letters for the vowels to denote different sounds than is conventional in American or British English.

The Sanskrit/devanagari vowels अ (u̱nder), आ (ah), इ (in), ई (eat), उ (put), ऊ (boot), ए (ate), ऐ (egg), ओ (oh - not as a diphthong), औ (ogre), are mapped to 'a', 'aa', 'i', 'ee', 'u', 'oo', 'ae', 'ei', 'o', 'ou', in that order, in most transcriptions of Indian names into English.

Thus ‘Ekamresh’ is pronounced ‘AkaamrAsh’ where the capitalized A’s represent the long ‘a’ (as in the name of the letter) and the 'aa' has the vowel sound in 'ah'. The short 'a' and short 'o' of American English are absent in Indian languages and their use can often result in mispronunciation of Indian names.

Furthermore, the letters used in English for the retroflex consonants (t and d) are also used to sound dentals (as in 'math' and 'the'), especially when they occur in the beginning of a word. As an example, the India name 'Dev' would not have its first consonant pronounced as in the American name 'Dave'. Similarly the name 'Tarun' would not have its first consonant sounded as in 'Tom'.

The letter 'h' is used to aspirate certain consonants. So, in the names 'Khare', 'Ghanshyam', 'Kaccha', 'Jhumki', 'Vitthal', 'Ranchodh', 'Thimmayya', 'Uddhav', 'Phaneesh', and 'Bhanu', the sounds 'ka', 'ga', 'cha', 'ja', 'ta' (retroflex), 'da' (retroflex), 'ta' (dental), 'da' (dental), 'pa', and 'ba' are sounded with a strong outward breath.

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