Member of Parliament. Son of Rajiv Gandhi and Antonia Edvige Albina Maino (Sonia Gandhi). His surname comes from his father's side — let's follow it back.
Prime Minister of India, 1984–89. Elder son of Feroze Jehangir Ghandy (Feroze Gandhi) and Indira Gandhi.
Journalist and Member of Parliament. Married Indira Nehru in 1942.
A Parsi (Zoroastrian) family from Bombay. Jehangir was a marine engineer. Feroze was the youngest of five children.
Prime Minister of India. Daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamala Nehru. Took the Gandhi surname on marrying Feroze in 1942, and kept it for the rest of her life and career.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), independent India's first Prime Minister, was the son of Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani Nehru of Allahabad.
Born Antonia Edvige Albina Maino in northern Italy (sources vary on the order of her given names). Known growing up as Sonia Maino.
She met Rajiv Gandhi in the late 1960s while he was a student in Cambridge, England. They married in New Delhi in 1968, and she took the name Sonia Gandhi. Separately, a widely circulated claim about her working as a "bar dancer" before marriage has been debunked — she has said she worked as a waitress while studying.
A name is a convention, not a blood test
Whose surname a child or spouse takes is a social and legal custom, not a biological rule. Rahul's father's family contributed the surname Gandhi; that convention doesn't erase his mother's own family name, Maino, or her identity — it's simply the more common pattern in most (not all) of the world.
Indira and Feroze's younger son, Sanjay Gandhi (1946–1980), married Maneka Anand (later Maneka Gandhi). Their son is Varun Gandhi — Rahul's first cousin.
“Gandhi naam ka chor — Rahul?”
On 5 February 2026, replying in the Rajya Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress party of being “habitual thieves” who “stole” Mahatma Gandhi's Gujarati surname — widely reported as his "stolen surname" dig at the Gandhi family.
बस सवालों से इतनी घबराहट? मोदी जी सच्चाई से ऐसा डरे, झूठ की शरण ले ली।“This much panic over a few questions? Modi ji got so frightened of the truth that he took refuge in a lie.” — Rahul Gandhi, responding on X the same day.