Family names, originally called gotra, or just gote in Punjabi, were not normally used in the village, as most landowners in our village had the same family name anyway. But in other places people added the family names for better identification. Everyone's gotra name was known to others because it indicated your lineage, and it generally determined your caste and excluded you from marrying someone from the same family. Literate people referred to family names as zaat (race, kind) or sub-caste; and in Punjab a family name could indicate your religion, caste, occupation, place of origin and possibly your social status. For example in Punjab, a Gaur, Kaushal or Sharma is a Brahman; a Sodhi or Khanna is a Kshatri; an Aggarwal, Goel or Gupta is a shopkeeper caste; while the family names Sidhu, Sandhu, Dhillon, Gill, Brard, Birk, Maan, Bhullar, Garewal, Dhaliwal, Deol, Aulakh, Chahal, Mahal, Cheema, or Randhawa, are Jat Sikhs. As a result of conversions in the past, some Muslim Jats with similar family names can be found in the Pakistan part of Punjab. Some educated people, especially writers and poets, gave themselves new last names (tukhallus) to indicate their town of origin, personalities or ideals rather than indicating their family or caste.
