Punjabi surnames
Ninety-five names, what each one means, where it comes from and which community carried it - plus the reason every initiated Sikh shares two names instead. Search it, filter it, and find your own.
How to read a Punjabi surname
Most Punjabi family names are one of three things, and it helps to know which you are holding.
A clan name. Gill, Sandhu, Dhillon, Cheema, Warraich - these are gotras, descent groups that predate the religious divisions later layered over them. This is why the same clan name turns up among Sikh, Muslim and Hindu families: the clan is older than the split.
A village name. Endings in -wal, -wala, -oke, -pura, -garh and -kot are settlement suffixes. Grewal, Purewal, Dosanjh and dozens of others point at a particular place, and through it at whoever founded or held it. For a great many families the surname is a map reference first and an identity second.
A community name. Arora, Ramgarhia, Saini, Kamboj, Awan and Arain name whole communities rather than single descent lines - historically associated with trade, the artisan crafts or particular kinds of cultivation.
One honest caveat before the list. These names record where a family sat centuries ago; they do not describe anybody now. Punjab's caste history is real, it did real harm, and the surnames carry traces of it - which is precisely what the Khalsa names below were created to override. This page describes communities and their history. It does not rank them, and there is no ordering here that implies one.
In 1699 Guru Gobind Singh replaced every caste surname with two names: Singh for men and Kaur for women. A Khatri merchant, a Jat farmer and a family from a community treated as untouchable would afterwards carry the same name and eat from the same bowl. Kaur did something else too - it meant a woman kept her own name rather than taking her husband's, in 1699.
The founding of the Khalsa, Vaisakhi 1699, Anandpur SahibThe list
Type any name, region or community to filter. Everything is on the page - the search only narrows it, so it works with JavaScript switched off too.
From Sanskrit siṃha, "lion". Given to every male initiate at the founding of the Khalsa in 1699, explicitly to replace caste surnames. Also used by many Punjabi Hindus and by Rajputs across northern India.
Given to every female initiate in 1699, and usually glossed "princess" - most likely from kanwar/kunwar. Its point was that a woman kept her own name rather than taking a husband's.
One of the largest Jat clans, found across both Punjabs. Often linked to Punjabi gil, "moisture". Shergill is a branch descended from it.
Also written Sindhu. The second-largest Jat clan in Punjab, on both sides of the border, and the founding clan of several Sikh misls including the Nakai and Kanhaiya.
A large Jat clan spread across central Punjab, and one of the most common Punjabi surnames in Britain and Canada.
A Jat clan traced to an ancestor named Sidhu Rao, from a line of Bhatti Rajputs. The Phulkian rulers of Patiala, Nabha and Jind were Sidhus.
A branch of the Sidhu clan, concentrated in south-western Punjab. The Faridkot state family were Sidhu-Brars.
A Jat clan of the Majha, historically concentrated around Amritsar and Gurdaspur.
A clan found among both Sikhs and Muslims, straddling the 1947 border - a reminder that clan and religion are separate axes in Punjab.
Another clan split by Partition, with both Sikh and Muslim branches.
A Jat clan of central and southern Punjab, prominent in the Sikh misl period.
Strongly associated with the Ludhiana district, where a cluster of Grewal villages still carries the name.
A Jat clan of the Malwa tract, south of the Sutlej.
Common in the Doaba, and therefore heavily represented in Britain, where Doaba migration dominated.
From Dosanjh Kalan in Jalandhar district. Carried abroad by Doaba migration - Ujjal Dosanjh became premier of British Columbia.
A large Jat clan of southern Punjab.
Found among Sikh and Muslim Jats alike across central Punjab.
A Jat clan of the Malwa region.
A Jat clan with a strong presence in the Doaba and among its diaspora.
Common in Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur, and correspondingly common in the West Midlands.
A Doaba Jat clan, well represented in Britain and Canada.
A Jat clan of the Malwa, considered one of the older clan names of the region.
A Jat clan of central Punjab.
A Jat clan of the Amritsar and Tarn Taran tract.
A Doaba clan; the Nanakshahi calendar was the work of Pal Singh Purewal.
A Jat clan of the Doaba.
A Jat clan strongly represented in the diaspora.
Also written Tur or Thind. A Jat clan of southern Punjab.
A Jat clan of central and southern Punjab.
A Doaba Jat clan; very common in Britain.
A Jat clan of the Majha region.
A Jat clan of the Doaba tract.
A Jat clan found across central Punjab.
A smaller Doaba Jat clan.
A Jat clan of the Doaba; the name also occurs as a place-name element meaning a rest-house.
Occurs both as a Jat clan and, separately, as a Khatri surname - one of several names that cross communities.
A Khatri surname, historically among the mercantile and administrative communities of Punjab. Also written Kapur.
A Khatri surname of the Dhai Ghar sub-group. Also written Mehrotra outside Punjab.
A Khatri surname, also the name of a town in Ludhiana district.
A Khatri surname widespread among Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs.
A Khatri surname, from seth, a merchant or banker.
A Khatri sub-group whose name derives from the Vedas. Guru Nanak was a Bedi, which makes it one of the most historically significant surnames in Sikhi.
A Khatri sub-group. The fourth Guru onwards were Sodhis, from Guru Ram Das to Guru Gobind Singh.
A Khatri surname. Guru Angad, the second Guru, was a Trehan.
A Khatri surname. Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, was a Bhalla.
Both a surname and the name of a whole community, historically mercantile and concentrated in western Punjab - which meant near-total displacement in 1947.
A Khatri surname; the word means bliss, and also names the Anand Karaj, the Sikh marriage ceremony.
A mercantile community and surname, historically strong in western Punjab and Sindh.
A Khatri surname found among Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs.
A Khatri surname.
A Khatri surname, sometimes written Uberoi.
A Khatri surname.
A Khatri surname; the word also means sword.
An Arora surname, historically concentrated in western Punjab.
A Khatri surname.
A Khatri surname.
A Khatri surname, common among Punjabi Hindus.
An Arora surname.
A mercantile community and surname of the Punjab hill tracts.
A Khatri surname.
A Khatri surname.
An Arora surname.
A Khatri surname, also written Saigal.
A Khatri surname.
Not a clan name but a community one, taken from Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, the eighteenth-century misl leader who held the Ramgarh fort. Adopted by Sikh artisan families - carpenters, blacksmiths, masons.
A Ramgarhia surname, strongly represented in Britain and East Africa - Ramgarhia craftsmen built much of the Uganda Railway.
A Ramgarhia surname, common in Britain via the East African route.
A Ramgarhia surname widespread in the British and East African diaspora.
A Ramgarhia surname.
A Ramgarhia surname.
A Ramgarhia surname; Landa is also the name of a Punjabi merchant script.
A large Jat clan, predominantly Muslim in Pakistani Punjab and with Sikh branches in India - one clan on both sides of the border.
A major Jat clan of central Pakistani Punjab, and a very common surname in Britain's Pakistani-heritage community.
A Jat clan of northern Pakistani Punjab.
A Jat clan of Pakistani Punjab.
A Jat clan of the Jhang tract - and the name of the hero of Heer Ranjha, Punjab's most famous love story.
The Jat clan of the Jhang bar country. Heer, in the same story, was a Sial.
A Rajput-descended clan of central Pakistani Punjab.
An old Punjabi clan recorded in medieval chronicles, found across both Punjabs.
A large community of northern Pakistani Punjab, heavily represented in the Pakistan Army.
A large agricultural community of central Punjab, historically market gardeners.
A pastoral community found across northern Punjab, Kashmir and beyond; Gujranwala and Gujrat both take their names from it.
A clan of the Ravi bar country; Rai Ahmad Khan Kharal led resistance in 1857.
A Rajput-descended clan of the southern Punjab river tracts.
A clan of central Pakistani Punjab.
A Rajput clan name found among Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus alike, and an ancestral line claimed by several Jat clans including the Sidhus.
A Rajput clan name used across northern India, including by Punjabi families of several faiths.
Both a surname and a community, historically market gardeners and cultivators of eastern Punjab.
A community and surname of eastern and central Punjab, historically agriculturalists.
A community historically engaged in caravan trade and transport, with a strong Sikh presence.
From bhagat, a devotee. Used across communities, and associated with the Ravidasia tradition and the bhagats whose hymns are in the Guru Granth Sahib.
A Punjabi surname found among Khatri and other families.
From bhandar, a store or treasury - originally an office rather than a clan.
An Arora surname, displaced from western Punjab in 1947.
A Punjabi surname common in the Doaba and its diaspora.
No surname here matches that. Try a shorter search, or a region like "Doaba" or "Malwa".
Origins and regions compiled from standard reference works on Punjabi clans and communities. Clan histories in Punjab are largely oral and frequently contested between branches of the same clan; where a derivation is disputed this page says "often linked to" rather than asserting one. Gurmukhi spellings follow common usage - many names have more than one accepted spelling in both scripts.
Why British Punjabi surnames look different from Canadian ones
If you grew up Punjabi in Britain you will know Bains, Johal, Sahota, Atwal, Dosanjh, Matharu and Kalsi. If you grew up in Pakistan or among British Pakistanis you will know Warraich, Cheema, Chatha and Awan. Neither list is representative of Punjab as a whole, and the reason is migration history rather than demography.
Britain's Sikh migration came overwhelmingly from the Doaba - the tract between the Beas and the Sutlej, around Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur - so Doaba clan names are wildly over-represented in the UK relative to their share of Punjab. Britain also received the Ramgarhia community twice over: directly from Punjab, and again in 1972 as "twice migrants" expelled from East Africa, where Ramgarhia craftsmen had built the railways. That is why Matharu, Bhogal and Kalsi are far more common in Birmingham than in Amritsar.
British Pakistani surnames come from a different Punjab again - Gujrat, Jhelum and Mirpur in the north, sending Warraich, Chatha and Awan families along a route that had nothing to do with the Doaba. Canada's Punjabi migration drew more broadly, from Malwa as well as Doaba, which is why Sidhu, Brar, Dhaliwal and Grewal are proportionally commoner in Brampton and Surrey than in Southall.
The practical upshot: a Punjabi surname often tells you which migration a family joined as clearly as it tells you which clan they belong to. The diaspora page maps those routes.
Frequently asked questions
Why do all Sikhs have the surname Singh or Kaur?
Guru Gobind Singh gave them at the founding of the Khalsa in 1699, expressly to abolish caste surnames. Every male initiate became Singh - "lion" - and every female initiate Kaur. Afterwards a Khatri merchant, a Jat farmer and a family from a community treated as untouchable shared one name and ate from the same bowl. Kaur carried a second meaning too: a woman kept her own name rather than taking her husband's, which was close to unheard of anywhere in 1699.
What caste is my Punjabi surname?
Most clan surnames are associated with a historical community - Jat clans with landholding and farming, Khatri and Arora names with trade and administration, Ramgarhia names with the artisan crafts. But a surname records where a family sat centuries ago, not what anyone is today, and several names cross communities and religions entirely. It is a genealogical clue, not a description of a person.
What are the most common Punjabi surnames?
Singh and Kaur, by an enormous margin, since every initiated Sikh takes one. Among clan names, Gill and Sandhu are usually reckoned the two largest Jat clans, then Dhillon, Sidhu, Randhawa and Brar. In Pakistani Punjab, Cheema, Warraich, Chatha and Awan are among the largest. In Britain the Doaba names - Bains, Johal, Sahota, Atwal - are over-represented relative to Punjab itself.
Are Punjabi Muslim and Sikh surnames different?
Far less than people assume. Clan names predate the religious divisions layered on top of them, so Bajwa, Cheema, Virk, Chahal and Bhatti are all found among Muslim, Sikh and Hindu families. What 1947 changed was geography, not the names - the same clan now sits on both sides of a border, with different given names and a different script.
Why do so many Punjabi surnames end in -wal, -oke or -pura?
Because they are village names. Those endings are settlement suffixes, so Grewal, Purewal, Dosanjh and many others point to a specific village and through it to the clan that founded or held it. Asking a Punjabi "what is your pind?" - your village - is often a more precise question than asking their surname, and it is the one older relatives will ask you.
Do Punjabi women change their surname on marriage?
Traditionally, within the Khalsa naming convention, no - Kaur is the name, and it does not change. In practice, custom varies widely: many Punjabi women abroad take a husband's clan name, many keep Kaur, and many use both. Both practices are common and neither is a departure from being Punjabi.
Keep going
The rest of the data on this site, all sourced the same way.
Which migration your surname joined - an interactive map and a timeline running from 1499 to today.
Census data from both Punjabs, and why published totals differ by 60 million.
Both Punjabs side by side - and the districts these clan names come from.
Population by country, and the turban and kirpan in law jurisdiction by jurisdiction.
The institution your family would have built within a few years of landing - counts, firsts and the kitchen arithmetic.
"Which village are you from?"
It's the first question an older Punjabi will ask you, and the one your surname half-answers. Learning enough Punjabi to answer it properly takes about ten minutes a day.
Compiled 2026 from standard reference works on Punjabi clans, communities and place-names. Punjabi clan history is largely oral, was recorded unevenly and often self-servingly by colonial administrators, and is frequently disputed between branches of the same clan - so derivations here are given as commonly held rather than settled, and a single surname may have several accounts of its origin, all sincerely held. Regions given are historical heartlands, not exclusive territories: every one of these names is now found across both Punjabs and across the diaspora. Gurmukhi spellings follow common usage; many names have more than one accepted spelling in Gurmukhi and in Shahmukhi. Community associations describe historical occupation and social grouping only, and are included because they are what people are searching for when they look up a surname - not as a statement about any living person.