Duggal surname: a multilingual writer and broadcaster

An unexplained etymology

Duggal is a surname found in Punjabi records. The Dictionary of American Family Names describes Khatri and Sikh uses but says the etymology is unexplained. That is a useful boundary to the evidence: a plausible-sounding meaning should not be treated as established merely because it circulates online. The reference describes name usage, not the faith or ancestry of every person bearing the surname. A shared name alone does not establish kinship. For a family investigation, collect the names of relatives, places and dates that can be checked in surviving documents, allowing for changes of spelling across languages and generations.[1]

A multilingual writer

The Library of Congress identifies Kartar Singh Duggal as a writer born in 1917 in Dhamal, in the Rawalpindi district of the Punjab of his birth. Its literary recordings page lists readings from several works and describes his writing in Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi and English. The older profile lists publication details and audio extracts. Its profile also notes his work with All India Radio and the National Book Trust. These details concern one documented writer and do not establish a relationship to another bearer of the name.[2]

The Library announced a new digital home for this project in 2026. The collection page returned an access challenge during our check; the recordings were not independently auditioned.[4]

Partition in literature and broadcasting

An All India Radio commemorative volume describes Duggal’s stories and novels as engaging with Partition and human relationships, and notes his later Sahitya Akademi Fellowship. The institutional volume offers one assessment of a writer who also worked in broadcasting; its literary output offers a different kind of evidence from recorded readings. Literary descriptions of Partition should be read as crafted accounts that can be compared with oral histories and archival records, rather than assumed to represent every experience. To trace a particular Duggal family, evidence connecting successive named individuals is needed; a shared surname with the author is insufficient.[3]