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Evidence: The evidence is now pointing towards the fact that our family name was Khan for many generations. Looking through old family documents, Raz's great grandfather and Raz's great great grandfather had the surnames Khan. Couple this information of recently finding a distant cousin from the U.S, through Ancestry.com, who has stated that her family's surname has been Khan for as long as she can remember. Her knowledge of her family's history goes all the way back to early-to-mid 1800 CE. She has a centimorgan (cM) distance of approx 10, which suggests our common ancestor could have been around 4 to 7 generations back.
Both the paternal and maternal lines of information suggest the name Khan was used on all sides of our family.
*Note: Centimorgans in DNA: A centimorgan (abbreviated as “cM”) describes the length of a piece of DNA. It is a unit of measurement. More specifically, it measures the distance between two chromosome positions. A shared DNA segment is a chunk of genetic material shared between two individuals. The length of a segment is reported in centimorgans
Khan (/xɑːn/) is a surname of Turko-Mongol origin, today most commonly found in parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Iran. It is derived from the historic title khan, referring to military chief or royalty. We have strong Turoko-Mongol DNA connections.
However, this also suggests that the name Khan wasn't seen as a religious name by some, but rather a name associated with power outside of the Islamic derived names. Indians (Hindus) and Muslims living under the British Empire had their quarrels in India during the 1800 CE and onwards, which was the basis of the formation of the nation of Pakistan. In theory, the Muslims, pre-partition, could have started naming their children with more Islamic names, both the forename and surnames, as a way to identify with their own beliefs, and as a form of a growing rebellion. This is just one of the theories.
Another theory could have been associated with the caste system and migration. Our family in Pakistan had come from all other areas of Pakistan to settle down in Punjab, namely near or around the city of Jhelum during the past thousand years. This could have been because of forced displacement, or even something simple as intermarriage or for work reasons. Any one of those three possibilities suggest that migration took place, and therefore work had to be found. In old Indian traditions, if a father became a pottery maker, he would then teach his sons to be pottery makers as they grew up. Then the local community would know the family as pottery makers. And before you know it, the family would be labelled as pottery makers, which was good for trade, but it also meant your chosen profession would be ranked on the caste system ladder. Social pressure could have forced them to change their surname because the name 'Khan' is associated with powerful rich people, landowners if you will, and not pottery makers. That's just another theory.
Anyways, the fact remains, the name changed in the early 1930s. nearly two decades before the partition of India, and almost a decade before World War II. In modern day Pakistan (and Pakistani expats), some families still prefer to have different surnames in a nuclear family structure, while others use a single surname throughout the family.
We can visually see the predominant religion in the family is Islam. We can also see Islam has been the dominant religion of choice in the past few hundred years within the family. However, it has also come to our attention that Christianity was also practiced by some family members in the 1800s. A recent connection showing we had an ancestor in the U.K in 1844 CE. He\she was most likely a Christian missionary to India, and is connected to the Trinity Church in Cambridge. We are currently in the process of finding out more information about our ancestor.
In the past 500 years, it is evident that the family and ancestors practiced Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and probably Sikhism. Hinduism was probably an outlier because evidence suggest that Buddhism was more dominant in our ancestors than Hinduism.
If we go through all of our ancestral history, it is most likely that during the neolithic age, some were animists, paganists, but our Persian ancestors were most likely practicing Zoroastrianism. During the Bronze Age, our ancestors most likely practising Polytheistic based religions, while others were practicing Zoroastrianism. And then late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, some must have practiced Judaism and Christianity, as well as Buddhism or Hinduism, maybe some still remained Pagans and Polytheistic believers. Some may have stopped practicing altogether. During the Iron Age, Judaism may have become the dominant religion followed by Christianity and Buddhism. And then in the Middle Ages, Islam was spreading fast and many people must have been converting. The past thousand years, it is evident that Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Sikhism were dominating our ancestor's beliefs. In our family, Islam became the dominant religion of today. Meanwhile, our ancestors of yesteryear who still walk the earth could still be practicing other religions or non at all.
Our family, today, live in a British culture while trying to preserve Pakistani culture, and also preserving Islamic culture. Our family in Pakistan preserve Pakistani and Islamic culture. However, without people realising, they are also preserving Indian culture, even though India and Pakistan partitioned a long time ago. This can be observed in wedding ceremonies, media and entertainment, languages spoken, sports, arts, and other social cultural norms. Religion connects Pakistan to the Arabic world, but social cultural norms connects Pakistan to India. Modern day educated Britons of Pakistani and Indian origin have no deep embedded quarrels with each other and share a lot of the culture from the continent.
The older British Pakistani generation have a stronger connection with Pakistan because they came from there. The first generation British born citizens of Pakistanis origins probably have a 50/50 link of interest to Pakistani culture, maybe even more. The second and third generation British born citizens of Pakistani origins will likely have even less interest to the heritage. This takes us full circle from the aforementioned of the 'religious connection to the Arabic world and social cultural norms to India', to the religious connections of the Arabic world and social cultural norms to Britain, with a hint of Indian/Pakistani culture.
Indian food is a generic umbrella term for food from the subcontinent. Did you know the foods you see on the menu were created in different parts of the subcontinent; India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. And then within those countries, foods came from certain states, provinces and districts. And then certain foods came from certain tribes, peoples, and origins within the countries. Most of those foods have the name of the place they were discovered, in them. Nowadays, in the age of the internet, they now define the food from which country it originates, so the umbrella term of 'Indian Food' is disappearing.
People of Pakistan: It is no secret that the people of Pakistan come from all over the world. It is the melting pot of South Asia. From the Paleolithic age when Q Nordic and Pakistani haplogroup people started their journey out of Africa, to the current day migrants of Central Asia and and beyond, it is a mix of many type of people. The Scandinavian people and Pakistani people have a distinct Paleolithic Age link. The Arabs, Turkish, Mongolians, Greeks and Greco Bactrians, Karasuks, Mauryans, Pashtuns, Brahims and even Alexandra the Great of Macedonia had invaded the area of the current day Pakistan, in the past. That's why you see Pakistanis of all phenotypes. The whole of the subcontinent is mainly divided by people of two origins, Indo-Aryans and Dravidians. Indo-Aryans are mostly congregated to the north and Dravidians to the south of the subcontinent. It is also the consensus of the research community that the Dravidians are the natives of the subcontinent, while the Indo-Aryans are from the rest of the world. This also explains why we are Indo-Aryans and our genes derive from Greece, Southern Levant, Persia and other places.
Raz at School: Some of Raz's friends at school thought he was Italian. While in Geography lesson at St.Ivo School in 1992, the topic of genetics and migration came up. The teacher asked Raz where his family originated from and what his ethnicity was, to which Raz replied 'Pakistan' and 'Pakistani of Indian origin'. The teacher told Raz that he thought he was from Greece or that part of the world. The teacher then explained to Raz how the people of India are of two origins, the Dravidians and the Indo-Aryans. The Dravidians were the natives of India and the Indo-Aryans came from the west, near east, middle east and central Asia. It was agreed that Raz could have been Indo-Aryan. DNA testing wasn't a thing back then, but it started Raz's interest in his family's DNA history. And now, many years later, a DNA test was taken, and it seems like the Geography teacher was correct.
Fact-Theory-Obsevation page is based on facts found, theories arising from other findings and patterns, and all of this happening through observation.
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