In South India, a last name is rarely a family lineage. Instead, it’s often a geographic coordinate, an ancestral home, or—like Kulkarni—a medieval government job.
Naming conventions change drastically every time you cross a state border.
- Tamil Nadu: Following the mid-20th-century Dravidian movement, Tamil Nadu largely abandoned caste-based surnames. Most people use their father's first name as an initial. The politician M.K. Stalin's name, for instance, stands for Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin.
- Kerala: Names frequently incorporate the Tharavadu (ancestral family home), along with a father's name or a community title like Nair, Menon, Pillai, or Varghese.
- Andhra Pradesh and Telangana: People use an Inti Peru (house name) which usually denotes an ancestral village. Uniquely, this is placed before the given name. In the name Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, "Nandamuri" is the ancestral village. It is also common to append caste titles like Reddy, Rao, Naidu, or Goud at the end.
- Karnataka: This state has the most varied naming conventions, ranging from village names (Padukone) to community titles (Shetty, Gowda, Bhat). But northern Karnataka has a distinct naming culture that heavily overlaps with its northern neighbor, Maharashtra.
This brings us to surnames like Kulkarni, Deshpande, Patil, and Joshi, which are abundant in both Marathi-speaking Maharashtra and Kannada-speaking Karnataka.
These are not caste names; they are centuries-old administrative titles. "Kulkarni" comes from the words Kula (village or family) and Karnika (scribe). It was the official title for the village record-keeper and tax accountant. A "Patil" was the village headman, while a "Deshpande" was the district-level accountant.
The reason these occupational titles cross modern linguistic lines is a matter of historical geography. The current border between Maharashtra and Karnataka was drawn in 1956 based strictly on language. But for centuries prior, northern Karnataka—including districts like Belagavi, Dharwad, and Bijapur—shared an integrated administration with Maharashtra.
A 1912 map of the Bombay Presidency, shown in red, which encompassed both modern-day western Maharashtra and northern Karnataka. - Photo by PadFoot2008 (Wikimedia Commons) is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
This region was historically ruled by the Maratha Empire, the Peshwas, and the Bahmani Sultanates, all of which utilized the exact same tax and land-grant system. Later, the British governed this entire continuous stretch together under the Bombay Presidency. Because the administrative apparatus was unified, a Kannada-speaking family from Hubli and a Marathi-speaking family from Pune both carry the surname Kulkarni today simply because their ancestors held the exact same government job under the same historical empire.