Banerjee

Origin & History

Banerjee is the anglicised form of the Bengali Brahmin surname 'Bandyopadhyay', derived from the Sanskrit for 'teacher of the Vande (Vande) region'. It is one of the 'Kulin' (elite) Brahmin surnames of Bengal along with Chatterjee, Mukherjee, Ganguly, and Ghosh. These five surnames historically identified the highest-ranked families within the Brahmin community of West Bengal and Bangladesh. Banerjees have been central to the Bengal Renaissance in the 19th century.