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ArchivesIndian (India) Male vs. Female names
In my work, I receive emails from people in our company, who are Indian, requesting information. I cannot tell from their names if they are male or female. Is there any easy way to differentiate? For example, I have observed that names beginning with SRI are male? If someone know or could point me to a good source, it would be appreciated. Thanks.
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Sorry, I do not think you will get what you want. Briefly, the issues are
(1) India is too diverse culturally for the concept of an Indian name to make any sense: Christians, Muslims, and Jewish people tend to use at least one name typical of their religion (e.g. Thomas, Salman, etc.), Hindus, on the other hand tend to use names of Sanskrit or European (e.g. Rita, Julie) origin. No rule can account for all: you need to first sort this out.
(2) Different regions/religions have different naming customs: some like Punjab (especially Sikhs) tend to use many unisex names, others like Bengal very few.
(3) Like many other Indoeuropean languages, gender of Sanskrit origin names is often marked by the suffix, and in names, grammatical gender often correlates with sex of the individual named. But, names are often shortened: durgAnArAYaNa may call himself durgA which is a female name. The part dropped is usually a male deity which initially formed a part of a female-male pair (the compound is male), or a word meaning things like feet or pleasure etc.
(4) Even when the full name is used, transliteration into English messes things up: looking at Shanta, you have no idea whether it is shAnta or shAntA, and that makes all the difference.
The shrI that you mention may not even be part of the name: it means beauty/wealth etc. but is used like English Mr. The corresponding Mrs. is shrImatI (meaning a lady possessing Sri) and Miss is kumArI (orginally meaning daughter, but with a strong sense of virgin or young lady). The corresponding male form kumAra is also used sometime. This is used in some parts of India. In other parts, there may be other marks like Kaur instead of Kumari.
In general, Sanskrit names ending in short closed -a (a schwa or omitted in most pronounications), or ending in a consonant (transliteration dropping the unpronounced final -a) is male. Those ending in -A (long open like in English car), -I or -ti are female. But, there is no simple rule.
(1) India is too diverse culturally for the concept of an Indian name to make any sense: Christians, Muslims, and Jewish people tend to use at least one name typical of their religion (e.g. Thomas, Salman, etc.), Hindus, on the other hand tend to use names of Sanskrit or European (e.g. Rita, Julie) origin. No rule can account for all: you need to first sort this out.
(2) Different regions/religions have different naming customs: some like Punjab (especially Sikhs) tend to use many unisex names, others like Bengal very few.
(3) Like many other Indoeuropean languages, gender of Sanskrit origin names is often marked by the suffix, and in names, grammatical gender often correlates with sex of the individual named. But, names are often shortened: durgAnArAYaNa may call himself durgA which is a female name. The part dropped is usually a male deity which initially formed a part of a female-male pair (the compound is male), or a word meaning things like feet or pleasure etc.
(4) Even when the full name is used, transliteration into English messes things up: looking at Shanta, you have no idea whether it is shAnta or shAntA, and that makes all the difference.
The shrI that you mention may not even be part of the name: it means beauty/wealth etc. but is used like English Mr. The corresponding Mrs. is shrImatI (meaning a lady possessing Sri) and Miss is kumArI (orginally meaning daughter, but with a strong sense of virgin or young lady). The corresponding male form kumAra is also used sometime. This is used in some parts of India. In other parts, there may be other marks like Kaur instead of Kumari.
In general, Sanskrit names ending in short closed -a (a schwa or omitted in most pronounications), or ending in a consonant (transliteration dropping the unpronounced final -a) is male. Those ending in -A (long open like in English car), -I or -ti are female. But, there is no simple rule.
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