Originally posted by: rh71
I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way... but I work in a large company that has a good number of Indian people (here in the US)... whenever I speak with them, a lot of times they think my last name is my first and just call me by my last name (on phone and on instant message chats). My name is Ed Lee... is there some reason (such as cultural) that they always call me Lee ? I do notice some of their names are reversed... the employee directory reversed theirs... (as I find out after speaking with them).
I've just never been aware of this and would like to understand because it has happened so many times with different people.
A lot of communities in South India, especially from my home state of Tamil Nadu, don't use family/last names. They use the first letter of their father's name as initial. So Srinivas Ramanujam would be R.Srinivas in India, but when applying for a passport (where a last name is required), he would have simply used his father's name as his last name. That is why you often see Srinivas as both first name and last name. Srinivas is a very common south Indian name.
In India calling a person by his last name, especially when the last name is short and has a ring to it, is quite common even in informal situations. For instance, a Srinivas Rao would often be called just 'Rao' even by his friends. In a lot of cases it is because the first name might be much longer than the last name. In your case, I think there is just some subconscious association with your ethnicity - it is not derogatory or racist, but I personally don't think it is very polite either to address someone by their last name without using the proper salutation (unless he or she is a very close friend and I have the liberty of word-play with their names). I am pretty sure they mean no offense, but I wish they would be culturally more sensitive. If it bothers you, you should just tell them to call you Ed
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