Swami (Sanskrit: स्वामी svāmī [sʋaːmiː]; sometimes abbreviated sw.) in Hinduism is an honorific title given to a male or female ascetic who has chosen the path of renunciation (sanyāsa),[1] or has been initiated into a religious monastic orderofVaishnavas.[2] It is used either before or after the subject's name (usually an adopted religious name).
The meaning of the Sanskrit root of the word swami is "[he who is] one with his self" (swa stands for "self"),[3] and can roughly be translated as "he/she who knows and is master of himself/herself".[1] The term is often attributed to someone who has achieved mastery of a particular yogic system or demonstrated profound devotion (bhakti) to one or more Hindu gods.[1] The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology as:[4]
Hindi svāmī 'master, lord, prince', used by Hindus as a term of respectful address, < Sanskrit svāmin in same senses, also the idol or temple of a god.
As a direct form of address, or as a stand-in for a swami's name, it is often rendered Swamiji (also Swami-jiorSwami Ji).
In modern Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Swami is also one of the 108 names for a sannyasi given in Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati's Gaudiya Kanthahara, along with Goswami, also traditionally used as an honorific title.[5]
Swami is also the surname of the Bairagi caste in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. In Bengali, the word (pronounced [ˈʃami]), while carrying its original meaning, also has the meaning of "husband" in another context. The word also means "husband" in Malay, in which it is spelled suami,[6] and in Khmer, Assamese and Odiya. The Thai word for "husband", sami (สามี) or swami (สวามี) is a cognate word.
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