It's another irritating thing to have different nomenclature -our passports have "surname" and "given name" while in U.S. they ask for "first name" (same as "given name" ) and "last name" (same as "surname") as these are "ulta".

In addition, an average Thamizhan of TN has only "initial" (first letter of father's name) and "name" (given name) and don't care for last name even while applying for passport etc. or even when travelling to U.S., like me, even though my father's name is the "surname" in the passport (which I now use as "last name"). Interestingly, my wife, son & daughter use my "name" (first name) as their "last name" which often raises some eyebrows as we intro ourselves as a family with me alone having a different last name

This is typically not an issue for people of other Indian states, who have "generic" last names (Patel, Rao, Nair, Sharma etc. for e.g.), but often a confusion for people from TN.