It is indeed strange.
Historically, I can think of the case of Mayuravarman of Kadamba dynasty who was a brahmin known earlier as Mayurasarman as given in the Talagunda inscription. But in the case of Kuppuswami Sastri’s ancestors, there does not seem to be any such royal background for the males.
So I had thought of two possibilities.
One of them was the option 2 of Dr. Paturi. Indeed, according to the obituary, the ancestors of Kuppuswami Sastri had migrated from Kerala. In the matrilineal Kerala, the child born to a Brahmin father and Kshatriya female would have grown up in the mother’s household and not in the brahmin agraharam or Nambudiri Illam. But due to some unique circumstance, if the father and son were to move to mostly-patrilineal Tamil Nadu, could the son have been accepted as a Brahmin?
The second simpler possibility is of course, Venkatavarma is typo for Venkatasarma.
Regards,
Palaniappan
1. The two cases , that of Prof. Deshpande being asked to add S'arma to his name Madhava during his upanayana samskaara and the name of Venkatavarma being a totally different name than the name Kuppuswami Sastri seem to be two different conventions.
2. 'Varma' being in the community-indicating name-ending of the son of a Brahmin father is possible in a matrilineal Keralite family system that prevailed till recently in Kerala, if the mother in that case is from a Varma ('Kshatriya') lineage.
3. But the case of Sri Kuppuswami Sastri doesn't seem to be even that. Is 'varma' a name ending separated from the part Venkata in this case ? The concept of 'samskaara name' in this case seems to be intriguingly strange.