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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

Knowing nothing at all about this topic, I have a very basic question: How do people find out about the caste of another person? I mean, for example, is it because of the family name? Or dialect/accent? (I'd know if someone grew up in Liverpool as soon as they spoke)

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Usually the last name is a giveaway. That said, last names are very regional in India, so someone from north India can pretty much instantly infer the caste of another north Indian, but that person would have difficulty doing the same with a south Indian last name.

Hi, just your average American here, please forgive my lack of understanding. I was under the impression that the system of using a father's first name as a son or daughter's last name was intended to disrupt caste identification by name. Is this not the case? I'm asking genuinely. I have worked with a lot of people from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and it's been something I have struggled to understand.

I'm a Hindu and I have never heard of the system you described. All Hindus I know of inherit their father's LAST name, not their first name.

Tamil Brahmins usually use the father's first name as the last name for the child.

so wheras in the North, you'd have Narayan Sharma's son being named Vishal Sharma, in Tamil Nadu Sriram Narayan's son would be Vishal Sriram.

So yes, the system does exist

Due Disclosure: South Indian, not a Brahmin, but I have many friends whose names follow this system.

The British introduced that system, aligned on the Western European system (not everywhere, though, Iceland is an outlier). That's why you have people like Padmasree Warrior, one of her husband's ancestors put his profession as his last name when the British asked for one, and it stuck. Then again, many English surnames are also based on profession, one of Jimmy Carter's ancestors literally made carts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variar Is a caste who have traditionally rendered temple services. it is not related to the english word or meaning warrior. The caste name also differs from region to region. I am not sure if the person you mentioned is the same caste or a different one.

Caste does not say your ancestors did that job, caste meant a person from a particular caste could only do that job and could not take up other jobs, people from other castes could not take their jobs and were disqualified because you were not born in a particular list of families. Some castes were prohibited from getting an education and were killed for this.

It's very common in South India. I'm a Hindu too, and my last name is my father's first name, just like my son's last name is my first name.

https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/what-s-in-a-name-ofte...

Yeah exactly, nowadays (especially in the US)... it's not easy to tell what caste a person is from.

If someone doesn't want to share their caste, that's very easy to do.

Hence... discrimination amongst indians is usually around where in india you're from, what language do you speak (tamil, hindi, marathi, etc.), what tier college you went to (IIT?), obviously gender, and other factors.

Comparing Caste to race is completely wrong and it's a red herring.

Having every indian fill out what caste they are on their job application doesn't solve the problem.

While the factors you mention are relevant, caste ranks higher than those, maybe lower than religion. Its pretty easy to tell someone's caste just from their last name (at least for North Indian Hindus). I have an uncommon last name that makes hard for most people to tell my caste but it also means lots of people have come up to me talking shit about our other low caste co-workers, assuming I'm high caste (I'm not). This phenomenon seems to exist purely with immigrant South Asians and disappears completely after first generation.

It's a difficult thing unless you have access to their official/historical documents. Family name can be a starting point. But it's not enough to full ascertain someone's caste. One thing you can do is to avoid using food preferences and skin color to figure out the caste. These have only led to more anecdotes and distract attention from the actual discrimination.

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