Surname Story

Read this article in Times of India. This talks about some strange surnames. Read this most amusing story.

In my professional travels I came across a young lady called Kulvinder
Bill-Stickers. I waited till I was just sufficiently acquainted with her to
ask how she came by such a radical name. She said her father had come with a
lot of Punjabi immigrants on a ship from Bombay to Southampton some years
before and on the voyage he had become sick and tired of being confused with all
the other Singhs that were on the ship. He took a private and stubborn vow,
as one sometimes irrationally does, to change his name to the first word
that he saw when he set eyes on England. The ship docked and from the
railings Mr Singh saw the epithet 'BILL-STICKERS WILL BE PROSECUTED'
stencilled in paint on a wall. It's a notice telling people not to put up
posters there, just as 'COMMIT NO NUISANCE' on Indian walls means "don't
piss or crap here."

Mr Singh had run up against a dilemma. Was 'Bill-Stickers' one word or two, and what was this little dash between them? He made urgent enquiries and a friendly lexicographer in the Southampton docks pub told him it was, in England, considered a single hyphenated word. So there he was, Mr. Harjinder Bill-Stickers, who begat Kulvinder. One hopes she has a brother so that the last name survives.

Just think of the possiblities of the last name they could have got. :)