, 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. 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. 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. "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. Kaur title being used by Sikh women was not invented by the reformers and some Sikh women prior to the movement used Kaur in their name, even some non-Sikh women, from Hindu Brahmin and Khatri-backgrounds, used Kaur in their name. 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. 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. 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". ==See also==