What’s in a Name: The Odia Surname System

Every Odia surname is a fossilised job description, a caste marker, or a devotional claim --- sometimes all three at once. This series traces how occupational titles assigned in the 11th century became hereditary identities frozen by a British census in 1901, and what they still tell you about a person today.

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Table of Contents

1. The Surname Map --- The top 20 Odia surnames by population, their caste associations, Sanskrit etymologies, and whether they cross caste lines or lock into one
2. The Three Blocks and the Freeze --- How Brahmin, Karana, and Khandayat castes generated most surnames, how the sahi system spatialised them, and how Risley’s 1901 census turned fluid titles into permanent boxes

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Companion to The Social Architecture, which covers the broader caste system, village structure, and jajmani system. This series focuses specifically on the onomastic layer --- what names encode and how they got fixed.