Almost nobody in a Punjab village is called by their registered name. Everyone has a short name, a nickname or both, and the nickname is generally descriptive and generally unkind.
Names are shortened by fixed rules: Gurpreet becomes Gopi or Preeti, Jaswinder becomes Jassi, Harjinder becomes Happy or Harry, Manpreet becomes Mani, Kulwinder becomes Kaka or Kuli.
Kaka and Kaki, boy and girl, are used as names into adulthood. Bhaji, Bibi, Chachi and Massi are used as address terms and become names.
The descriptive nicknames attach to a physical feature, an incident, a job or a habit, and once fixed they are permanent and are inherited by the household as an identifier: a family may be known by the nickname of a grandfather nobody remembers.
In the diaspora the same names become Harry, Jazz, Sunny, Bobby and Lucky, which is the same process running through English.
A village's actual social map is a map of nicknames and the revenue record is a map of names, and they do not correspond.
Almost everybody in a Punjabi village has a name they are actually called, which is not the name on the school register or the electoral roll.
They come from a physical feature, a childhood incident, a trade, an animal, or a shortening, and they are often the only name most of the village knows.
This matters for anybody doing research. Asking for a person by their official name in their own village frequently gets a blank look.