Keeping tabs on your clan

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I have often wondered where the rest of my kind spread to once they hit the U.S. shores. My branch of our larger clan (which arrived in the mid-60s) started in Illinois and then spread on to California and elsewhere. I recently came upon the website of the Gens Project [via Dexterous Doings]. Plugging in my last name, I was surprised to see that my kind is also numerous (if you count <100 as numerous) in Texas and New York:

It’s just like an outbreak map

The Gens project is born by the initiative and the experience of a team of graduates in Humanities at the University of Genoa – Italy, who have specialized in history, demography, statistics, archive-keeping and librarianship.

Originally it was a research project about the distribution of surnames across Italy, but after the first realization and the first impact with the public, we decided to make it available to others. [Link]

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p>Just for fun, I entered in some other notable last names…

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My mom’s maiden name. I know it may sound like inbreeding but Tripathis in my family ALWAYS seem to marry Trivedis and vice versa. Will I break this disturbing cycle?

Vinod’s family will make its last stand at the Alamo (there appears to be <5 of them)

No surprise here

Note that both Singhs and Patels have made it to North Dakota

36 thoughts on “Keeping tabs on your clan”

  5. I went to high school – in Illinois – with some Tripathis…uh, are you related to Sandeep?

    Nope. Apparently the clan is larger than I suspected 😉

  6. wow. my last name generates a less than 5 trail of the states my family’s moved to/from. And a big fat 0 in the state where I curretnly reside! I’ve registered to vote, and pay taxes here..don’t I count for at all?! waahhhh!

  8. Ok, figured it out:

    er, I don’t know how, but the middle part of my previous comment seems to have disappeared. Meant to say that my last name generates a less than 5 trail of the 2 states my family moved to/from. and a big fat 0 where I curretnly reside. I’m invisible!

  13. Note that both Singhs and Patels have made it to North Dakota

    Of course we have. However, I suspect that’s all me 😉

  15. Is Valloppillil the clan name for certain? Some South Indians tend to twist the village into the clan name. Unless the name has been Americanized, say like “Joe Valloppillil”

  17. It would be interesting to see the results with the first name as your last name. My first name happens to be a surname in the US. (Surprising, to say the least)

  19. the definition of a clan – as in a group of people with common ancestry – would probably be too narrow in the indic context. even the few examples abhi gave suggest the divergence.
    1. tripathi – indicative of academic learning . see also shastri, trivedi etc.
    2. singh (sikh) – an ‘honorific’, no? but there are divisions and partitions by village name – i believe it is possible to tell jat sikhs from non-jats by the name that follows singh
    3. Valloppillil – if it were to be a village it would be the truest clan definition… should this be a patronymic as with Tamil, Malayalam folk then this is definitely not a clan-name..
    4. Vij – ahh.. the punjabi hindoos-r-us . i know my folks trace origins to particular villages within the indo-pak punjab but i do not know how the names came about. pray illuminate .
    Then other categories…
    5. munshi, vaid, zaveri, doctor, engineer – likely to have originated through professional affiliation
    6. Rao, talukdar – indicative of social status
    7. chandran, vasan, kumar – ‘chosen’ or abbreviated names for north american consumption
    .. hmm… it nets out to categorization by learning, profession, status, geographical origin… in most cases – but for the lone wolves out there who threw it all behind. have i missed any particular group?

  20. this has nothing to do with the original, obivously light-hearted post; but the talk of names and social identity leads to an observation that the numerous social categories indicative by the meaning behind names indicates a possibly rigid social hierarchy without fluidity of movement. such a hierarchy might lead to social and cultural stagnation and possibly oppression

  21. forgot to suggest…given last names are inhereted and taken through marriage, a social status delineated by last names and developed through (obviously) inheriting names through birth and marriage would also provide an impetus to rigidity of marriage expectation within a given community. seeing as the way in which community is preserved and replicated is through marriage and birth

    sorry for the double post

  22. btw I looked up my name too and i did not mean to harsh the mood of the original posts. pls feel free to disregard any harshness the above would create; as it is not my intention to harsh

    in future will try strenously not to triple post (red-faced as an indian can be; no talk of complexion pls!)

    tank ju bery much

  23. After two days in the desert sun My skin began to turn red After three days in the desert fun I was looking at a river bed And the story it told of a river that flowed Made me sad to think it was dead You see IÂ’ve been through the desert on a harsh with no name It felt good to be out of the rain In the desert you can remember your name Â’cause there ainÂ’t no one for to give you no pain La, laa la, lalala …

  24. Probably unrelated , but I remember this from my school days. This was narrated to me by a Bhaiyya friend ( from UP…) How the UPites got their last names? A child is born and- the woman had slept with one brahmin : Ved slept with 2 brahmins : Dvivedi slept with 3 brahmins :Trivedi with 4 brahmins : Chaturvedi When it was with a brahmin and a non brahmin : Mishra And when she didnt know the caste : Gupta

  25. Tripathi = Eastern UP (Uttar Pradesh) Brahmins.

    Not so. We have been in Gujarat for countless generations. We get around.

  27. Abhi,

    Check this out, I typed Tandon. There is no Tandon in Oregon. I must not be living in Oregon.

    If there are using census data, then during the last census I was in Indiana. Or are they using other data.

  28. I think biggest clan of South Indians must be Chetty(Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada) or Shetty (Tulu and Kannada) or Setty (Telugu). The variants of this surname could be Chettiar, Shettigar(with honorific plural -ar). However, by occupation these groups are very diverse. They do not belong to a single caste also. In old days they could be either landlords, merchants, weavers etc… I wonder if any other clan is so wide spread in South India.

  29. 2. singh (sikh) – an ‘honorific’, no? but there are divisions and partitions by village name – i believe it is possible to tell jat sikhs from non-jats by the name that follows singh

    Listen man once and for all singh is not synonymous with just Sikhs. Long before Sikhism came into existence we rajputs have been carrying that middle name around. Alright?

  30. Thambi: *Probably unrelated , but I remember this from my school days. This was narrated to me by a Bhaiyya friend ( from *UP…) *How the UPites got their last names? *A child is born and- *the woman had slept with one brahmin : Ved *slept with 2 brahmins : Dvivedi *slept with 3 brahmins :Trivedi *with 4 brahmins : Chaturvedi *When it was with a brahmin and a non brahmin : Mishra *And when she didnt know the caste : Gupta

    I hope you know this is a joke?! Yeah I heard it too in college.

  32. I just checked for Bin Laden and there were none. I thought Osama had some family from one of his 58 brothers and 51 sisters living in America. But I guess I was wrong.

    Or maybe they changed there last name.

  33. PearlJamFan,

    Apparently his entire family left the US soon after 9/11, except for one rebellious niece who now uses her mother’s maiden name instead.

  34. Yeah I saw a story about her couple of months ago in GQ magazine. She was hot.

    She told a story about when she was younger in Saudi Arabia, and Osama came to her visit her father, she opened the door and Osama saw her and ran away cause she wasn’t wearing a veil.

  35. Abhi: For those who care to know – and purely from historic perspective – the way your Grandpa explained to me, we are what they call “Saamvedi” Modh Brahmins. Our “Gotra” is “KushKush” – who was son of Maharishi “Vishwamitra” – which literally means “Friend of the Universe”. There are four “Vedas” namely: RigVeda, YajurVeda, SaamVeda, and AthrvaVeda. The way I was told “TRIPATHI” is one who used to recite all the four “Vedas” three times a day. In Sanskrit “TRI” means “Three”, and “Paath” means lesson and “Paathi” means One who recites or studies. There you have it. “TRIPATHI”. As for you breaking the “Disturbing” cycle, since you being a “Male”, unless the girl you marry is “Liberated” and “Forward” (??) she will forego her “Maiden” last name and adopt “TRIPATHI” as her married last name. There are about 200 to 300 families in and around Ahmedabad – Gujarat with Surname “TRIPATHI”. As per “Legend” they wandered and built the world famous Sun temple at “MODHERA” even before Bhagwan RAM was born, as he stopped by at this temple to worship SUN……Love….Dad

  36. I guess I said my earlier comment inartfully. I was trying to tie in the caste system with the need for people in India or the Diaspora to marry people within their community. Anyway, its probably not a winning cause to make sense of what I wrote, but if anyone happens to agree with the ideas behind it, it’d be awesome to know about it. Just trying to make sense of some of the more vexing aspects of our culture; caste, marriage-pressure, ect. you know, the stuff thats really easy to figure out. 🙂

    anyway…