Narrative series
What's In A Name
Odia surnames as social memory — occupation, caste, title, devotion, village order, and colonial freezing.
Chapters
- 01 Chapter 1: The Surname Map Odisha has roughly 46 million people. About two hundred surnames carry ninety percent of them. The five most common --- Sahu, Behera, Nayak, Das, Pradhan --- account for nearly eight million people between them. This is not a coincidence. It is a map of medieval labour organisati 2,009 words
- 02 Chapter 2: The Three Blocks and the Freeze Almost every Odia surname belongs to one of three caste blocks. Each block generated its names through a different mechanism. 2,008 words