Missing Singhs & Kaurs Among Sikhs

What i may be saying here may be a lil sensitive to some of ya'll might wanna stop reading quite about,,,,

Now. :)

as for the others,..

while i was trying to do something useful wif my morning today ( ive been only waking up at noon since the holls started)i cudnt help to notice that a majority of the Sikhs had their caste name attached at the bak

for eg Inderpreet Kaur lehl/dhillon/sandhu/sidhu/ randhawa and so on.

some of em have even gone ot the extreme of simply putting their caste name without the Singh/Kaur attached to their name..e.g. Inderpreet Lehl

For those of you non-Sikhs reading here's a brief intro to wht im talking about.

Kaur, in modern day Punjabi means "princess" and is the name widely used as the second name by female Sikhs. This custom was first introduced in 1699 by Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru when he administered Amrit (baptism) to both males and female Sikhs. All female Sikhs were asked to use the name Kaur after their forename and males were to use the name Singh (lion). This custom further confirmed the equality of both genders as was the tradition set by the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak.


Kaur provides Sikh women with a status equal to all men from what i know of so far. This was also intended to reduce the prejudice created by caste-typing based on the family name.

The Article :

Some Sikhs today have chosen to retain their traditional caste-system based family names in addition to the suffix Kaur or Singh. This appears to defeat part of the purpose of Guru Gobind's mission in requiring a standardised naming system independent of caste or family background. ( In India, a majority of the people take the Caste system a little too seriously making life a misery compared to some developed nations around the world that have developed a diff thinking) It is encouraged for Sikhs to follow the tradition set by the tenth Guru in abolishing the caste system and to use the surnames 'Singh' and 'Kaur'.

However, as the numbers of Sikhs in the world have continued to increase, this poses a problem of duplicity of names, with many individuals having the same exact names. To overcome this, some Sikhs have started to add the name of their 'village' as the surname and so have avoided the problem of many individuals having the same names.


Hmm. So, adding a further name makes logical sense but it is not clear what system would be compliant with the principle set by the Gurus.

I mean i myself have faced the problem of people mistakening me on FB as another Inderpreet all the way down in Kl. but still, after reading this in the morning today i cudnt help but to wonder about what i did.

Was it a sin? Hell no.

Was it wrong religiously? I dunno. I certainly dont think so

All i'm saying is adding ur caste name to the suffix Singh/Kaur is on the other hand a harmless option. After all a majority of the forms we fill up requires the last name.

but to those who have rmoved the word Singh/Kaur from ur names, u might wna reconsider it someday like what i did ( even i did not use the word Kaur as my profile name on Fb and elsewhere). somehow it x sound quite right.

It was an identity we were blessed with so why not appreciate it?

After all, we were born Khalsa first,,no...?



p.s. If there's anything wrong I have made regarding this post, dont hesitate to drop me a comment :)