Indian names and honorifics

August 10, 2015 10:24 AM

I am interested in the various honorifics that are sometimes incorporated into (or sometimes partially substituted for) Indian names. I run into this from time to time professionally, and I feel terribly ignorant about it. Is there a resource or primer online that could help me get a better understanding of this and related matters of naming? Or can you give me the ten cent tour?
posted by DirtyOldTown to Society & Culture (3 answers total)

The problem you're probably running into is that (like so many other things related to India) there are things that are recognized over most of India and also highly specific regional specialties, making a general ruleset difficult. Even the Wikipidia page is primarily Sanskrit-derived. Indian's will pretty universally recognize "Sri" and "Smt", but the Dravidian languages aren't referenced on that page. Here's one for Tamil, but there doesn't seem to be equivalents for the others.
posted by Runes at 10:43 AM on August 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Having married into a Bengali family, this is one that has been VERY confusing. As Runes says, there's a lot of variation across the cultures that comprise India. The nice thing is that people tend to be very gratified when you make a good faith effort, even if you miss the mark!
posted by dotparker at 4:07 PM on August 10, 2015

Seconding Runes, India is so very diverse that general rules are pretty much impossible.

However, one thing that's pretty universal (at least in the north) is the honorific 'Ji.' It's used to denote respect, and is generally used for people who're older/above you in the hierarchy. For example, Gandhi is very commonly referred to as Gandhiji, at least colloquially. It's also used as a kind of placeholder to make speech more polite- 'Han ji,' is a polite 'yes,' while 'Ji?' is a request to clarify/repeat what the person has said before. It's kind of like 'sir/ma'am,' I suppose, and I can't for the life of me recall a Tamil equivalent.
posted by Tamanna at 8:33 PM on August 10, 2015