Jacob Copeman

Professor Jacob Copeman

Early Career Fellow 2013

The Politics of Names and Naming in India

This research project analyzes the hitherto under-explored significance of naming practices in respect of caste and religion in India, with a particular focus on the names given to persons. Though frequently stigmatizing, caste names can be treated inventively: hidden, changed, or subject to revaluation. The project aims to explore historical strategies of naming and renaming whilst also bringing the study squarely into the present: what can naming strategies tell us about Indian society in a time of expedited social change?

More information

Research outcomes

Copeman, J. (2023).

Super Singhs and Kaurageous Kaurs: Sikh Names, Caste and Disidentity Politics. In J. Copeman, L. Chau, J. Cook, N. Long & M. Marsden (Ed.), An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange: Interactions, Transactions and Ethics in Asia and Beyond (pp. 138-177). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Das, V., & Copeman, J. (2015).

Introduction. On names in South Asia: Iteration,(im) propriety and dissimulation. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, (12).

Copeman, J. (2014).

Surprise, As Usual, in Joyce, F. (ed.) ISRF Bulletin Issue III: On Assignment, 14-22

Areas of interest

Social Anthropology Cultural Anthropology Religion South Asia Ethnography

Cohort

ECF1

Biography

Jacob Copeman is Oportunius Research Professor and Distinguished Researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. He is co-editor and author of numerous books including, Gurus and Media: Sound, Image, Machine, Text and the Digital (UCL Press, 2023), The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2012), Global Sceptical Publics: From non-religious print media to ‘digital atheism’ (UCL Press, 2022), An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange: Interactions, transactions and ethics in Asia and beyond (Berghahn, 2023) and Hematologies: The political life of blood in India (Cornell University Press, 2019).

Biographical details correct as of 15.04.26