Surname list
This page lists people with the surname Cherian. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.
Cherian/Cheriyan is a Syrian Christian surname of West Asian (Hebrew-Aramaic) origin, presumed to be a derivative of Zecharya (Zacharias or Zechariah) and a variant of Zacharias popular among the Christian community of Kerala, southern India. The final -n is the Malayalam third-person masculine singular suffix.
In India it is mostly found only as a given name although this trend is changing in the present generations, but in the United States and United Kingdom, Europe and Australia, and also Indian states other than Kerala, it is also used as a family name among expatriate families from Kerala. [1] [2]
The generally accepted explanation is that this name is of Semitic (Hebrew-Aramaic) origin, presumed to be a derivative of Zecharya (Zacharias or Zechariah) and a variant of Zacharias. This is supported by the fact that Kerala was one of the chief centers for ancient spice trading between the West and East and there was a historic Nasrani community with religious, linguistic, cultural and genetic connections to the Levant and Middle East. The final -n is the typical Malayalam third-person masculine singular suffix.
There is an alternative hypothesis suggesting an Armenian origin for the name. This relies on the empirical observation that a name ending with ian is highly probable to be an Armenian name. The original candidate Armenian name is Khatcherian which means "follower or son of the Cross". This theory also takes support from the fact that there has been significant presence of Armenians in India, especially Chennai and Kolkata, who migrated to India to escape persecution from Turkey.[3]