How the name works

My parents are from Tamil Nadu, a state in the southern part of India, where it is customary for people not to have a surname at all. Instead, one carries an initial (or several) before the given name, indicating one's lineage in a certain sense. By this convention, my name would be S. Brahadeesh, the “S.” standing for my father's name, Sankaranarayanan.

Indeed, if you address me as Mr. Sankarnarayanan, then you are actually addressing my father.

For the eagle-eyed reader who notices an extra vowel in my father's name that is absent in my surname: this is a result of a clerical error that was introduced in my high-school and has propagated forward ever since. I was occasionally thankful for this, since certain forms had a hard limit of 15 characters on the length of the surname, and this error let me fill out those forms without much of a fuss.

I grew up in Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra, where the predominant convention was to not only have a surname but to also have the middle name as one's father's name. One can imagine the hilarity in trying to convince someone in this context that my last name is my father's name and that my middle name does not exist.

How to say it

My given name is from Sanskrit and my surname is from Tamil, so there are a few different pronunciations that are all equally acceptable. The simplest is:

Brahadeesh — bra-ha-deesh, where the ‘d’ is a soft sound (not like the ‘d’ in “day”).
Sankarnarayanan — saṅ-ka-ra-naa-raa-ya-ṇan, where ‘ṅ’ is as in “sink” and ‘ṇ’ is pronounced with the tongue curled slightly back.

My given name is written in Sanskrit as बृहदीश and my surname in Tamil as சங்கரநாராயணன். The Sanskrit pronunciation would be slightly different — bṛhadīśa (IAST), approximately bri-ha-dee-sha, where the ‘ri’ is as in ‘rig’, not ‘reel’. My full name written out in each script would look like this:

Sanskrit: बृहदीश शङ्करनारायण
Tamil: ப்ருஹதீஷ/பிரகதீஷ சங்கரநாராயணன்

In my surname, the ending ‘-an’ is an artifact of how Tamil names are written, so it would probably be dropped in Sanskrit, and similarly the ‘sa’ would be replaced by ‘sha’, leading to शङ्करनारायण.

There's also no exact equivalent in Tamil for the ‘r’ sound as it appears in my given name in Sanskrit — perhaps the closest version of my given name in Tamil would just be the semantic equivalent பெருவுடையன் (Peruvudaiyan)? Fun to think about, but not really pertinent, since I only go by Brahadeesh and no other variant.

Hindi deserves its own comment, since I'm required to have an official Hindi spelling for my name on many forms. Though Hindi uses the same script — Devanagari — as Sanskrit, the Hindi spelling is a close transliteration of the English name rather than the Sanskrit original:

Hindi: बृहदीश/ब्रहदीश शंकरनारायणन

Etymology

The name Brahadeesh refers to the deity at the Peruvudaiyar Temple at Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, built between 1003 and 1010 CE by Rajaraja Chola I.

The name Sankarnarayanan refers to the deity at the Arulmigu Sankaranarayanaswamy Temple at Sankarankovil, Tamil Nadu, said to have been built in the 10th century CE by Ukkira Pandian.

How to address me

In an informal setting, please call me Brahadeesh.

In a formal setting, you can address me as Dr. Brahadeesh, or Dr. Brahadeesh Sankarnarayanan. Students in India overwhelmingly prefer to address their male instructors as “sir”. This is also acceptable to me if you are indeed my student, and respectful variations such as “professor” or “Prof.” are also fine.

My name in print

If you happen to be citing my work, you can use Sankarnarayanan (et al.) without any fuss, since I publish my work under the standard format of Brahadeesh (given name) Sankarnarayanan (surname).