Election panel reveals most common Gujarati names, surnames.
Do you know Rameshbhai? Confused? How about Babubhai? Or wait a second, how about Gitaben or Savitaben? If these names sound too familiar to leave you baffled, it’s not your fault. With over 5.39 claimants, Ramesh is the most common Gujarati name, followed by 3.8 lakh Babubhais. But 2.94 lakh Gitas and 2.24 lakh Savitas give a run for their names to many men!
And if your hunch is that it’s the Patels, Parmars and Thakores who rule the world of surnames in Gujarat, you are not wrong either! Together they comprise nearly 12% of Gujarat’s population with 33.99 lakh Patels, 16.04 lakh Parmars and 10.64 lakh Thakores.
Many more such interesting facts surfaced during the analysis of the 2009 Lok Sabha election data of the 3.64 crore voters in Gujarat carried out by the Election Commission.
The commission has launched an interesting exercise to figure out the frequency with which different names and surnames occur in the electoral rolls of the state’s 26 parliamentary constituencies.
“EC is converting all data to Unicode for storage.
The information about the names and surnames most commonly used in Gujarat surfaced during the conversion. It’s an interesting exercise which gives us a peek into an interesting facet of our society,” said Anita Karwal, chief electoral officer of Gujarat.
The surname Patel had dominated the electoral rolls even in 2005 when this exercise was last conducted by the poll panel. The Shah surname is not as uncommon either. Some 4.10 lakh people, that is, 1.12% Gujaratis flaunt it. Shahs are closely followed by 4.06 lakh Sheikhs.
Further, the proverbial Gujarati duo of Magan-Chhagan seems to have started competing with each other! Maganbhai is way ahead of Chhaganbhai, at least in the tally of namesakes. The former is ranked ninth with 2.24 lakh adherents, while the latter has barely scraped into the top 20 list. It is ranked 19th with 1.85 lakh people with that surname.
With 2.94 lakh women in the state named Gitaben, it’s the most common name among the fairer sex. But in 2005, it was the Manjulabens who led the popularity chart. It is a mystery how she has slipped to the 13th rank this time, trailing behind Gitaben, Savitaben and Hansaben.
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