Jhumpa

Jhumpa is a feminine given name of Bengali origin, used in India and among the Bengali diaspora. It is most widely associated with Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American writer whose work centers on immigrant life and cultural identity.

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in 1967 in London to Bengali parents and grew up in the United States. She rose to prominence with Interpreter of Maladies (1999), a collection of short stories that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. Her subsequent books include the novels The Namesake (2003) and The Lowland (2013), as well as the story collection Unaccustomed Earth (2008). Lahiri has published works in English and, later, in Italian, completing In Altre Parole (Other Words) in Italian in 2015 and its English translation in 2016. Her writing often explores themes of migration, family, memory, and language.

The name Jhumpa itself is primarily encountered within Bengali-speaking communities and the Indian diaspora, where it may function as a given name or nickname. Outside those contexts, the name is relatively uncommon, and the prominence of Lahiri has led to a strong association with that single figure in contemporary literary culture.