Raazstone - According to Mr Naipaul, you might be onto something there! This is what he said when accepting the Nobel Prize: "We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal. Two years ago a kind Nepalese who liked my name sent me a copy of some pages from an 1872 gazetteer-like British work about India, Hindu Castes and Tribes as Represented in Benares; the pages listed - among a multitude of names -those groups of Nepalese in the holy city of Banaras who carried the name Naipal. That is all that I have." Source: - http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html