Kaur

Surname of Sikh women

For people with the name and other uses, see Kaur (disambiguation).

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19th century depiction of a Sikh woman (a Kaur) from a Haveli

Kaur (Punjabi: ਕੌਰ Punjabi pronunciation: [kɔːɾᵊ] [Gurmukhi] / کور [Shahmukhi]; lit. 'crown prince[ss]' or 'spiritual prince[ss]'),[1] sometimes spelled as Kour, is a surname or a part of a personal name primarily used by the Sikh and some Hindu women of the Punjab region.[2] It is also sometimes translated as 'lioness', not because this meaning is etymologically derived from the name, but as a parallel to the Sikh male name Singh, which means 'lion'.

## Etymology

[edit]

The Dictionary of American Family Names states that the name is etymologically derived from the Sanskrit word Kumari meaning girl or daughter which was later abridged to Kuar and became Kaur by metathesis.[2] Other scholars, however, assert that Kaur is a diminutive of and the Punjabi equivalent of Kanwar/Kunwar – a Rajput title meaning prince or bachelor that was used for people of status, and eventually became a common Rajput female designation.[3][4][5][6] W.H. McLeod has also written that most regard the name as the female form of Kumar.[7]

## History

[edit]

See also: Khalsa § Initiation of women

Detail of a folio from Colonel James Skinner’s ‘Tazkirat al-Umara’ (‘Biographies of the Nobles’) showing the unnamed widowed Sikh queen of Rup Singh of Radaur, circa 1836

The traditional narrative is as follows: The tenth guru of Sikhs, Guru Gobind Singh, introduced Kaur and Singh when he administered Amrit to both male and female Sikhs; all female Sikhs were asked to use the name Kaur after their forename, and male Sikhs were to use the name Singh.[8] The adoption of Kaur and Singh as religious surnames was also intended to reduce caste-based prejudice. Because familial last names often signal a person's caste status (or for women who adopted their spouse's surname, the caste of their spouse), substituting Kaur and Singh allowed Sikhs to implement the Sikh religion's rejection of the caste system.[9] This narrative has been contested by some scholars who wrote of the name's anachronistic religious association.

According to early sources, "Kaur" was used by both males and females in Punjab. The appellation appears in the Guru Granth Sahib retaining its traditional delineated meaning of "prince", whereas in the Dasam Granth it is used to refer to a woman's name.[10] "Kaur" was appended by some Sikh women prior to the initiation of the Khalsa, including the daughter of Guru Har Rai. According to older British accounts, "Kaur" ceased to become a male signifier in the late nineteenth century and henceforth became encumbered to an exclusive female title.[11] Until the twentieth century, the name's usage was a result of cultural diffusion, as opposed to religious association.[11]

Despite the widespread belief that "Kaur" was conferred to women on the inauguration day of the Khalsa, there is a dearth of textual evidence corroborating this, further exacerbated by the paucity of conclusive information about the inauguration in general and discrepancies in the sources regarding female naming patterns, state J. S. Grewal and Doris Jakobsh. The appellation "Kaur" for women did not appear in early Sikh sources following the initiation of the Khalsa, in addition, the appellation was traditionally omitted in the name of the symbolic matriarch of the Khalsa, Mata Sahib Devan. Although the early historical texts thoroughly stressed the importance of appending the name "Singh" for male Sikhs, the only text stipulating female naming conventions, the Prem Sumarg, stated that women were to be conferred the title "Devi". The Tat Khalsa, a reformist Sikh movement seeking to consolidate the hitherto multifariousness within the Sikh community and establish a separate, distinct identity from Hindus and Muslims, had begun to emerge in the late nineteenth century. Literature published by Vir Singh and Kahn Singh Nabha within the framework of this emerging polity, wrote of a Hindu woman's conversion which had been accompanied by the adoption of the surname "Kaur", the latter featured the transmutation of Mata Sahib Devan's name to Mata Sahib Kaur.[12] These works precipitated the Tat Khalsa's increased cognizance for the need of a consolidated Sikh female identifier. The Tat Khalsa ignored the injunction within the Prem Sumarg and supplanted it with "Kaur", due to its association with female Sikh aristocracy in the eighteenth century and its Rajput origins.[13] According to Jaspal Kaur Singh, the baptism of women and the bestowal of "Kaur" was incipient only during the colonial period, during which the Tat Khalsa sought to combat perceived threats to Sikhism, both from Christian and Arya Samaj proselytization, by removing "Hinduized" and "un-Sikh" cultural and religious practices from within their fold and accentuating and introducing egalitarian practices to the fore of their religion.[14] By the mid twentieth century, under the auspices of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, "Kaur" had been cemented and ratified as the Sikh female epithet, attaining similar significance as its male counterpart "Singh". Female Sikh nomenclature prior to the Tat Khalsa's efforts was ambiguous, heterogeneous, undelineated and lacked authoritative basis; single names instead of dual names were prevalent among women, ancillary epithets included "Singhni" or "Sikhni", many Sikh women were also named "Kumari" or "Devi".[11][15][16][17]

## See also

[edit]

* Women in Sikhism
* Singh
* Kunwar

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Brodd, Jeffrey (2003). World Religions A Voyage of Discovery. Saint Mary's Press. p. 113\. ISBN 9780884897255.
2. ^ a b Hanks, Patrick (8 May 2003). Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University Press. p. 284\. ISBN 9780199771691.
3. ^ Jakobsh, Doris (1999). Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. University of British Columbia. pp. 296–300. S2CID 143307470.
4. ^ McLeod, W.H. (2014). Historical Dictionary of Sikhism. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 175\. ISBN 9781442236011.
5. ^ Atwal, Priya (2021). Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire. Oxford University Press. p. 34\. ISBN 9780197566930.
6. ^ Singh, Pashaura (2019). "K". A Dictionary of Sikh Studies. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192508430.
7. ^ McLeod, W. H. (1995). Historical Dictionary of Sikhism. Scarecrow Press. p. 119\. ISBN 978-0-8108-3035-6.
8. ^ Hawkins, John (2016). The Story of Religion The Rich History of the World's Major Faiths. Arcturus Publishing. p. 302\. ISBN 9781784287368.
9. ^ Cole, Owen (2010). Sikhism - An Introduction: Teach Yourself. John Murray Press. p. 51\. ISBN 9781444131017.
10. ^ Jakobsh, Doris (1999). Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. University of British Columbia. pp. 296–300. S2CID 143307470.
11. ^ a b c Jakobsh, Doris (2004). "What's in a Name? Circumscribing Sikh Female Nomenclature". In Singh, Pashaura; Barrier, Norman Gerald (eds.). Sikhism and History. Oxford University Press. pp. 176–185. ISBN 978-0-19-566708-0.
12. ^ Fenech, Louis E.; McLeod, W. H. (2014-06-11). Historical Dictionary of Sikhism. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 269\. ISBN 978-1-4422-3601-1. "Because she was childless she was, according to tradition, designated Mother of the Khalsa and renamed Sahib Kaur. The change will have taken place during the Singh Sabha period."
13. ^ Jakobsh, Doris (2023-04-27). "Vir Singh's Publication of the Gurpratap Suraj Granth". In Malhotra, Anshu; Murphy, Anne (eds.). Bhai Vir Singh (1872–1957): Religious and Literary Modernities in Colonial and Post-Colonial Indian Punjab. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-86700-8.
14. ^ Singh, Jaspal Kaur (2020-04-30). "Mughal India and Colonialism: Revising History, Gender Identity, and Violence in Bhai Veer Singh's Sundri". Violence and Resistance in Sikh Gendered Identity. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-06026-3.
15. ^ Jakobsh, Doris (2012-03-02). Sikhism. University of Hawaii Press. p. 75\. ISBN 978-0-8248-6034-9. "Reformers saw in this political and cultural signifier an important means for distinguishing Sikh women from their coreligionists, and a rather obscure cultural tradition was thus legitimized with religious significance. It is important to note that Sikh history was rewritten to give this name practice deep historical roots."
16. ^ Nesbitt, Eleanor (2016-04-28). Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-106277-3. "The Singh Sabha's interpretation of Sikh history, which forms Sikh understanding today, is that since 1699 women have (like the Sundri of Bhai Vir Singh's novel) received amrit on a par with men, and have as part of this initiation assumed the name 'Kaur'....It is possible that it only gradually came into its present widespread use as the second part of a Sikh woman's name."
17. ^ Fenech, Louis E.; McLeod, W. H. (2014-06-11). Historical Dictionary of Sikhism. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 175\. ISBN 978-1-4422-3601-1. "The usage that applied to all Khalsa women was not introduced until the time of the Singh Sabha in the early 20th century. The first rahit-nama to include it was the Sikh Rehat Maryada."

* Karamjeet kaur, History of Sikhs: 1469-1838, Vol I: Oxford University Press, 2004, page 80, footnote 14.

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