Bengali Last Name Generator

Generate Bengali last names from West Bengal and Bangladesh: long and short forms like Bandyopadhyay and Banerjee, family names like Ghosh, Sen and Dasgupta, titles like Chowdhury, Talukdar and Bhuiyan, and Christian and Buddhist names like Gomes and Barua. One surname per entry, 500 in all.

About Bengali last names

Bengali surnames are shared by West Bengal in India and by Bangladesh, and by families of several faiths. Many Hindu Bengali names come in a long and a short form. Bandyopadhyay, Chattopadhyay, Mukhopadhyay and Gangopadhyay are the full forms; Banerjee, Chatterjee, Mukherjee and Ganguly are the shortened ones that took hold in English under British rule. The same habit gave Bose for Basu, Mitter for Mitra, Dutt for Dutta, Sircar for Sarkar and Tagore for Thakur. Both forms are in use, and each is its own entry here.

A second large group began as titles. Chowdhury, Majumdar, Talukdar, Sarkar, Sikdar, Tarafdar, Howlader, Munshi and Bakshi were land, revenue, pay and record-keeping posts under the Mughals and the nawabs of Bengal, and Hindu and Muslim families alike kept them as surnames. Spellings vary by family: Majumdar, Majumder and Mazumdar are all carried.

In Bangladesh many people have no inherited family name. The last part of a name is often a second given name, such as Rahman, Islam, Hossain or Uddin, and many women carry Akter, Begum or Khatun. The list keeps a small share of these, next to family names like Bhuiyan, Mridha, Khandaker and Miah, the Portuguese surnames of Bengali Catholics (Gomes, Rozario, D'Costa), Barua, and names of the hill and plains peoples such as Chakma, Marma and Sangma.

How to choose Bengali last names

• Choose the long or the short form by setting. Many people use both, Bandyopadhyay when writing in Bengali and Banerjee in English, so a formal or literary scene can take the long form and an office or passport the short one.
• Keep one spelling per family. Chowdhury, Choudhury and Chaudhuri are the same title, but relatives share a single spelling, so do not switch inside one household.
• Do not read a character's religion off a title surname. Chowdhury, Sarkar, Biswas, Mallick, Mondal and Talukdar are carried by Hindu and Muslim families alike.
• For a Bangladeshi family, the last name need not be inherited. A father, a son and a daughter can each have a different one, for example Karim, Islam and Akter, and that is ordinary.
• Treat compound surnames such as Roy Chowdhury, Guha Thakurta and Dutta Gupta as one family name and keep both parts together. Some are also written closed up, as in Dasgupta and Sengupta.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most common Bengali last names?

There is no single count for the whole of Bengal, but Das, Roy, Ghosh, Saha, Mondal, Biswas and Sarkar are very widely carried, and Banerjee, Chatterjee and Mukherjee are among the best known abroad. In Bangladesh, Rahman, Islam, Hossain, Ahmed and Khan fill the last-name slot very often. All of them are in the list.

Are Banerjee and Bandyopadhyay the same name?

Yes. Bandyopadhyay is the full form and Banerjee the shortened one that spread in English during British rule, with Banerji and Banerjea as other spellings of it. Chattopadhyay and Chatterjee, Mukhopadhyay and Mukherjee, and Gangopadhyay and Ganguly are paired in the same way.

Do people in Bangladesh have family names?

Some do and many do not. Families with a title or lineage name such as Chowdhury, Bhuiyan, Talukdar, Khandaker, Syed or Kazi pass it down. Many others have two or three given names, so the last one, such as Rahman, Islam or Uddin, works as a surname on forms without being inherited.

Which surnames in the list belong to smaller communities?

Bengali Catholics carry Portuguese surnames such as Gomes, Rozario, D'Costa and Corraya. Barua is the usual surname of Bengali-speaking Buddhists around Chittagong. Chakma, Marma and Tripura are community names that people of those groups use as a last name, and Sangma and Soren are clan names of the Garo and the Santal.

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All 500 Bengali last names