L19: Significance of Goan Names

Good morning, everyone! Welcome back. I hope the cemetery visits were illuminating — I know it can feel a bit unusual to go and sit in a cemetery, but I hope those of you who did it found something valuable there. Before we begin today, let me quickly ask — did anyone find an inscription that surprised them? A date? A Portuguese sentence? A name that was unexpected? [Allow brief responses] Wonderful. Those observations will stay with you. Cemeteries are archives. And that connects beautifully to today's lecture, because today we are talking about names — and names are among the most personal and most historically layered archives that exist. This is Lecture 19: The Significance of Goan Names. Quick recap. In Lecture 17 we looked at birth customs — the rituals welcoming new life. In Lecture 18 we looked at death customs — the rituals marking departure. Today we look at names, which are one of the most enduring gifts that the birth moment gives to a person, and which carry within them a compressed history of family, community, caste, and colonial encounter. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] Here is an exercise. I am going to read some names — both first names and surnames — and I want you to think about what you can infer from them. Ready? Antonio Xavier Figueiredo. Ramakant Vitthal Shenoy. Maria Conceição da Silva. Narayan Mahadev Dessai. Francisco Estevão Fernandes. Shantaram Bhiku Naik. Inacio Caetano Braganza. Now — what do you observe? Almost every person in the first category has a clearly Portuguese first name and Portuguese surname. The second category has Sanskrit or Marathi first names and surnames that carry caste markers. Just from the name alone, before you know anything else about the person, you can make reasonable inferences about their religious community, their caste or social background, and the taluka they might be from. This is remarkable. Names in Goa are not just labels. They are biographical summaries. They tell a story of who this person is and where they come from — a story that was written not just by their parents but by centuries of history. [10–40 minutes: Core Content] Let me discuss Goan names in three parts: Hindu Goan names and their structures; Catholic Goan names and their origins; and the specific phenomenon of the Portuguese surname as a historical document. First, Hindu Goan names. Traditional Goan Hindu names follow conventions that are similar to broader South Asian Hindu naming practices but have specific Goan flavours. First names in Hindu Goan families are typically drawn from the Sanskrit tradition — the names of deities, of mythological figures, of auspicious concepts. Ram, Krishna, Shiva, Vishnu in their many forms. Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Durga for women. But Goa also has its own local patron deities whose names appear in personal names — Shantadurga, Ravalnath, Saptakoteshwar. A child named after the village deity is being dedicated to that protective power from birth. The middle name in many Hindu Goan families is the father's first name — so Ramakant Vitthal means Ramakant, son of Vitthal. This patronymic middle name is a common South Indian and Goan convention. The surname in Hindu Goan families carries caste information. This is one of the most distinctive features of the Goan naming system. Let me go through some key surnames and what they indicate. Shenoy — or Shenoi — is associated with the Saraswat Brahmin community. The Saraswat Brahmins are the dominant Brahmin community in Goa and coastal Karnataka. They are traditionally associated with trade, administration, and learning. A surname like Shenoy immediately signals Saraswat Brahmin identity. Dessai — or Desai — is a title-surname associated with revenue officials and landholders under the Maratha and Deccan Sultanate administrations. Dessai families exist across Hindu castes but the name signals a historically administrative or landowning status. Naik is a title meaning leader or chieftain. It appears across many communities — military leaders, village headmen. It is a surname found among various Hindu castes in Goa, particularly in the New Conquests. Pai — another Saraswat Brahmin surname, from the Sanskrit pati or lord. Families named Pai are typically GSB — Goud Saraswat Brahmins. Prabhu — Chitpavan or Saraswat, meaning lord or master. Kamat — associated with the Vokkaliga or farming Brahmin communities of Goa and coastal Karnataka. These surnames are not just family labels. They are caste markers, and in traditional Goan Hindu social life, they functioned as an immediate social directory. When you met someone whose surname was Shenoy, you knew they were Saraswat Brahmin. When someone was a Naik, you knew they were likely from a different — though also traditionally respected — background. This information governed social interactions: who you could dine with, who you could marry. Now, Catholic Goan names. And this is where history becomes very visceral and very personal. When Goan Hindus converted to Catholicism under the Portuguese, they were required to adopt Christian names — specifically Portuguese Catholic names. The names of saints, of the Virgin Mary and her various titles, of figures from the Portuguese royal and noble tradition. So a man previously named Ramkrishna Shenoy might become António Xavier Figueiredo. The first names were straightforward — João, António, Francisco, Manuel for men; Maria, Ana, Teresa, Inês, Conceição for women. These are all standard Portuguese Catholic saints' names. Francis Xavier — the Jesuit missionary — was so influential in Goa that Xavier became one of the most common names and middle names in Goan Catholic families. To this day, Xavier is everywhere in Goan Catholic naming. But the surnames are the more fascinating story. When the Portuguese administered mass conversions, they needed to give the converts surnames — because Portuguese administrative practice required surnames in a way that the Goan Hindu naming system, based on personal names and caste titles, did not always provide in the same form. The process of surname assignment varied. In some cases, the convert took the surname of their Portuguese godfather — the man who sponsored their baptism. This meant that entire villages might end up with the same Portuguese surname, because they were all baptised by the same Portuguese official or his agents. In Salcete, you find villages where a large proportion of the Catholic families have the same surname — Fernandes, or Pereira, or Rodrigues — because they all descended from people who were baptised in the same mass conversion event. In other cases, the surname was chosen to reflect the convert's former Hindu caste title, with a Portuguese translation or equivalent. So a Dessai — revenue collector — might become a Dessai or Desai even as a Catholic, because the Portuguese administrators recognised and wanted to preserve the caste-based administrative hierarchy. Some of the most distinguished Goan Catholic families took surnames that were the Portuguese equivalents of their Hindu caste titles. The Braganzas — one of the most famous Goan Catholic surnames — was the name of a great Portuguese noble house. The Goan Braganzas were granted this distinguished name as a mark of their high status as converts. The Braganza mansion in Chandor in Salcete — a magnificent seventeenth-century house that is one of the finest examples of Indo-Portuguese domestic architecture in Goa — is today maintained by two branches of the family and is a major heritage site. Other common Catholic Goan surnames and their origins: Fernandes — from Fernando, a Spanish-Portuguese royal name. Rodrigues — from Rodrigo, medieval Iberian. Pereira — from the Portuguese word for pear tree, a toponymic surname common in Portugal. Da Silva — of the forest, another Portuguese toponymic. Mendes — from the old Germanic Mendo, a common medieval Portuguese name. Coutinho — from the Portuguese place name Couto or Coutinho, meaning an enclosed estate. Now here is a striking thing. Many of these Portuguese surnames were given to Goan converts specifically to distinguish them from Hindus and to mark their new Christian identity. But over time, the surnames became the most powerful markers of caste within the Catholic community itself. The Braganzas were Brahmin converts. The Figuiredos were often Chardo — the Kshatriya equivalent. The lower-caste converts might have surnames like Fernandes or Rodrigues — very common surnames that were distributed more widely and did not carry the same elite association. So the Portuguese surname system recreated caste hierarchy within a Christian framework. Within Goan Catholic villages today, people know very well which surnames belong to which caste background. A Braganza is Brahmin. A Costa might be Chardo. The Catholic caste system, mediated through Portuguese surnames, is alive and well in Goan social life, even if it operates more subtly than it did in previous generations. I should also mention the interesting category of double-identity names — families that use a Hindu name in one context and a Catholic name in another. There are Goan families, particularly in areas where both communities are present, that have a Catholic branch and a Hindu branch with related surnames. The Catholic branch might be Fernandes while the Hindu cousins are still Dessai — because one ancestor converted and took a new surname while another did not. These parallel surname families are living evidence of the moment of conversion inscribed in family trees. Finally, let me mention naming in the Goan Muslim community — a community we should not neglect in our survey of Goan heritage. The Goan Muslims — particularly in areas like Banastarim, Calangute, and in the New Conquests — have Arabic Islamic names along with surnames that are often Konkani in origin or derived from occupational titles. The combination of an Arabic first name with a Konkani or Portuguese-influenced surname is itself a small piece of Goan multicultural history. [40–55 minutes: Activity and Discussion] Alright, I want to do something very personal now. I would like each of you to take two minutes and write down your own full name — first, middle, and last. Then write a sentence or two about what you know of the origin of your surname. Where does it come from? What does it mean? What community or history does it mark? [Allow two to three minutes] Good. Who would like to share? Sebastião? [Allow student response] Beautiful — and you can see how much history is compressed into that one name. Let me ask a few more. Gauri? [Allow student response] Yes — and notice that the Pai surname instantly signals Saraswat Brahmin identity to anyone who knows Goa. The name is functioning as social information. So let me ask the class this broader question: given what we now know about how Goan names were assigned — especially how Catholic surnames were distributed or imposed during the conversion period — do you think a Goan Catholic person today carries a burden of that colonial history in their own name? Or has the name become so fully their own, so deeply part of their identity, that the colonial origin is irrelevant? This is a genuine philosophical question about the relationship between inherited identity and historical origin. [Allow discussion] I love these discussions because there is no clean answer. The name is yours — it is your family's name, it is your identity. And yet it carries history. Both things are true simultaneously. [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] To summarise. Today we examined the significance of Goan names as historical and cultural documents. Hindu Goan surnames carry caste markers — Shenoy for Saraswat Brahmin, Dessai for revenue administrator, Naik for chieftain. Catholic Goan surnames are Portuguese in origin, assigned during or after conversion, and they recreate caste hierarchy within a Christian framework — Braganza for Brahmin converts, common surnames like Fernandes and Rodrigues distributed more broadly. Place names encoded in personal names reflect the deep attachment to village and temple. The naming system as a whole is a compressed archive of four hundred and fifty-one years of Portuguese presence, conversion, and social organisation. Your assignment: trace your own family surname — first name and last name. If you do not know the history, ask your parents or grandparents. Write a short family name history — one page. What does your name mean? What community does it come from? Are there any stories your family tells about where the name came from? Next class — Lecture 20 — is our Unit II recap and field activity. We are going to consolidate everything we have learned in this unit — from the Portuguese era overview through the communidade, the language heritage, the birth and death customs, and the naming system — and we are going to plan a small field exercise that will take you out into Goa to observe this heritage directly. Come ready for an active, engaged class. See you then!