Evidence record · given name
Meaning and use are separate questions.
Lexical evidence: A dictionary-based meaning for the complete personal name has not been established here.
Documented use: Daljit Nagra is the public author name; literary sources explicitly connect it with the earlier pseudonym Khan Singh Kumar.
A name attached to published work
The Poetry Archive presents Daljit Nagra under that full author name and connects it with his books, poetry awards and recordings. Its biography also explicitly identifies Khan Singh Kumar as a previous pseudonym. This gives a direct documentary relationship between two public writing names, rather than a guess that similarly placed words must form part of one legal name.[1]
The archive discusses the pseudonym in connection with Nagra’s work and concerns about how a poet is presented to readers. It does not offer a dictionary definition of Daljit. This entry accordingly records the writer’s public forms without deriving a compound translation from his literary themes.[1]
When a writer changes the name used in print
The South Asian Britain research project gives a more specific publication sequence. It records Nagra’s magazine writing under Khan Singh Kumar from the late 1990s and a subsequent move to publishing as Daljit Nagra as his work gained wider publication. These are authorial and publishing choices attached to a named individual.[2]
The same profile traces family life in Yiewsley and Sheffield and parents who had arrived from Punjab. Those details establish this writer’s regional connections through a documented biography. They do not make the pseudonym an alias for everyone named Daljit or justify assumptions about an unfamiliar person who shares the name.[2]
A first-person Punjabi connection
In his essay The Art of Writing for Fun, published by the Royal Society of Literature in 2019, Nagra describes a crowded family home near Heathrow, parents who came from India in the 1950s and Punjabi as his first and household language. This is an account under his own byline, rather than a linguistic identity inferred from that byline.[3]
He contrasts limited space for schoolwork with having a desk at university. The essay adds a personal setting to the public name’s literary record, while leaving the original family choice of Daljit unexplained. That naming intention remains separate from his later choice of a pseudonym.[3]
Sources & notes
Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.
- The Poetry Archive. Daljit Nagra ↗literary archive profile · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Biography paragraphs identifying his books, awards and previous pseudonym; no poem text reproduced. Accessed 2026-11-04.The Poetry Archive biography identifies the pseudonym and discusses the poet’s work; audio recordings were not independently reviewed in this check.Return to A name attached to published work, paragraph 1 ↑Return to A name attached to published work, paragraph 2 ↑
- South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories research project. Daljit Nagra ↗scholarly public-history profile · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Biographical account, especially late-1990s magazine publication and switch from pseudonym to his own name. Accessed 2026-11-04.The project profile describes Nagra’s family background and publication under a pseudonym; original magazine issues were not independently inspected.Return to When a writer changes the name used in print, paragraph 1 ↑Return to When a writer changes the name used in print, paragraph 2 ↑
- Daljit Nagra; Royal Society of Literature. The Art of Writing for Fun, in A Room of My Own ↗first-person published essay · Source date: 2019 · Locator: Printed pp.28–29, essay heading and opening account of parents, household language, school and university; copyright page gives 2019. Accessed 2026-11-01.The specified passage was actually inspected; the evidence is used only for the claims identified in this entry.Return to A first-person Punjabi connection, paragraph 1 ↑Return to A first-person Punjabi connection, paragraph 2 ↑
Record PH-NAM-0021 · English edition · human review not performed