Listicle: Meet 10 women named India who shine in their diverse fields

Several women named India have had film and TV careers. This British actor, at 21, has an impressive resume. She plays Lizze on Sex Education, and has also appeared in Line of Duty and Doctor Who. She’s also performed in West End musicals. Why does she look so familiar? She played young Queen Charlotte in Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.

Perhaps the most famous India on the list, Hicks is a British designer, writer, businesswoman and onetime fashion model. She has India in her ancestry – Hicks’s grandmother is the Earl and Countess Mountbatten of Burma. King Charles is her second cousin, and she was bridesmaid at his 1981 wedding to Lady Diana Spencer. She co-hosted Season 2 of Top Design, and has a successful line of décor products.

The American singer songwriter has seven Grammy noms, and won in 2002 for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for her album Little Things, as well as Best R&B Album for Voyage To India. India has fire. Last year she (along with several artists) threatened to remove her music from Spotify as a protest against the platform hosting Joe Rogan’s controversial podcast.

The British actor and producer is named to honour her Bengali maternal grandfather. She’s had roles in small films such as Run Fatboy Run (2007), Kimi (2022) and All Hail King Julien (2014). But ’90s kids might know her as Miranda Stone from Season 7 of One Tree Hill. She’s also guest starred on Chuck, How I Met Your Mother, Castle and The Night Shift.

The American architect passed away, at 90, in 1998. But in her lifetime, she did plenty for women visible in her field. The first woman in Ohio, US, to appear and pass the state architecture exam, she also headed the US Army Corps of Engineers’ architecture department. As top boss of Vogt, Ivers and Associates, she built commercial, industrial, recreational and educational buildings, despite competition from all-male firms.

The British journalist and writer, 57, was born Gisèle Aertsens into a family related to Indian freedom fighter Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and First World War hero Gaston Aertsens. She changed her name, at 13, to reflect her mother’s Asian heritage. Her novels have been translated into 28 languages, the most recent, Darling (a humorous retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love), came out last year.

Women named India have even made it to Playboy magazine. Allen (in pic) appeared as a centrefold in December 1987. She was also Playmate of the Year in 1988. Another model, who uses the stage name, India Summer, trained as a teacher and even worked in finance and modelling. But she’s much better known for her adult films. IMDB lists her busiest period as between 2011and 2015.

A blue-blooded India, the American actor and documentary film producer is the granddaughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia and is related to the former royal family of Serbia. For much of the 2010s Oxenberg was involved in NXIVM, a multi-level marketing company that was eventually exposed as a cult. Her 2020 memoir Still Learning, and the 2020 docu-series Seduced recounts her time as a member of the group.

The American soccer star, 38, has played in Sweden for Dalsjöfors GoIF, and for Saint Louis Athletica, Sky Blue FC, the Atlanta Beat of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) and the United States women’s national soccer team. India continues to be a popular name in the US; close to 300 girls born in 2021 were given that name.

The British-born model and director spent her childhood in Australia where she was discovered at a talent show. Her 2016 short film, Stripped, follows her single mother’s move to Australia in 1977, where a fraud job offer forced her to be separated from her three children and strip for a living. The film has won prizes at the Edmonton and LA’s Playhouse West film festivals.