Hi Richard I have not read your posting in full but you have brought up several intriguing issues which are very pertinent to carib gen and learning in general. There is only one which at this time I can respond to and that is you interest in the variability of language and spelling. London standard did not exist until 1920 or thereabouts. Spelling was entirely phonetic and very regional. I have always dreamt of what it might have sounded like on Antigua in 1741 with Scotsmen and Irishmen and Englishmen and dutch and Spaniards all occupying the same island trying to mak a killing at raising sugar or in your case .....nutmeg. My family, who left Antigua in 1741 to take on free lands in Jamaica, eventually grew arrowroot and were apparently very successful at it, but by that time there was already a movement towards uniform spelling. No doubt some of this evolved from the consistent travel of mail and correspondence although I have no cogent knowledge of a connection between one evolution and the other. I regret that I cannot indulge the list and yourself in more of this stuff but until my hand gets better it is impossible to type at length. I enjoy your postings and hope you will continue to grace us with your ponderings ChrisCod C.M. Codrington("american version # 1952) Editor: Carib GenWeb "Historic Antigua and Barbuda" web-site Co-Administrator: Carribean-L@rootsweb.com Member: Barbados Museum Historical Society, Museum of Antigua and Barbuda Historical and Archaeological Society. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Allicock [mailto:richwyn@idirect.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 10:36 PM To: CARIBBEAN-L@rootsweb.com Subject: East Indian Indenture Immigration W.I. Names Some-one pointed out that Indian names could also be formed by adding two names together, like Bhagat+Singh to get Bhagatsingh. This is quite true. I did not want to deal with this until we had gotten further into the history of East Indians in the British Colonies in the West Indies, as we were talking about Anglicisation and Creolisation of the names. The above example is more appropriate to observe outside of the process or situation of Anglicisation in which we will find more of the fracture of previously compounded names. I am also interested in this process not for academic purposes but also practical ones for genealogical purposes. In the absence of so much records, and also in some cases the presence of too many records, as in the case of too many persons with the same names, I am interested in being aware of the process of Anglicisation/Creolisation for the clues that names can give on the whereabouts of persons and in a situation where dating them might be ambiguous.. An indentured immigrant person could arrive with a name spelt one way on the ships manifest, arrrive on a plantation and imediately or within a few years have their name spelt slightly differently, depending upon who made the initial record and who kept the records for the next five and later three years. Some-one might even move to another plantation after one contract expired and get their name again spelt differently, by Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irish, and even Welsh and Cornish men, (all with their various county and regional accents) and not to forget the East Indian "Drivers" "Headmen" themselves. All of the foregoing would have a different ear, different levels of familiarity to East Indian names, different levels of education, different ways of spelling even in English. Then one can have one's children start attending schools and churches and have the names spelt variously yet again. And the orthographic and phonetic abilities of the recordists would also change over ti! me from one generation to another. Names can give clues in terms of Anglicisation and non-Anglicisation. Anglicised names tell us that the person in question was in a situation of Anglicisation and in a period of Anglicisation. The anglicising situations are of course on the plantations and in the schools and churches. The process of anglicisation would be more relevant to people who will later move off the plantation and into the towns and villages of the British and Creoles. On the plantations the sheer force of numbers and community pressure would serve slow the process of Anglicisation/Creolisation beyond initial name changes. Once the East Indians on the Plantations started to be able to better "staff" their communities with arrivals of Pandits/Pundits and Moulvis from India and later Pakistan or other colonies, the name changes would revert in many instances to what was common "back-home". But this would mostly affect new births and fore-names rather than surnames. And we also get more Hindu and Muslim ! names as fore-names for those religious groups, but a mixture or "Indian" and English and purely English fore-names for the Christian East Indians. We also have to add the fact that many East Indians did not take opportunity for educating their children the way that the Creoles and Chinese did. Also, we should take into account that it was not until close to the turn of the 1900 that the male - female ratio was equalised and stable families were becoming the norm. This meant increasing pressure to school one's children and prepare them for on or off plantation jobs. So even for the on-plantation East Indians, the pressure for Anglicisation was growing, with ultimately movement to the towns and villages, where they would likely be taught by anglicised creole teachers. This pressure increased dramatically after the cessation of Indentureship/Immigration in 1930, and with the prospect of Independence after 1953. Between these two water-shed years the East Indian Community would produce their own Anglicised teachers thus furthering the process of Anglicisation, and the promotion and retention of anglicised names. Later suc! h teachers and students would even found their own schools. The legal requirement that birth, marriages and deaths be registered with the Registrar-General would further serve to fix name changes in whatever form it was registered, (anglicised and non-anglicised), and that again can give clues to the degree of anglicisation of the parties concerned. The need to produce documents for legal and business purposes - land and other property records, taxes etc., - for schooling one's children, for travel etc. would again fix names. But then we also have to consider the recording of Censuses, and when the recording of names would be recorded by some-one else, we are back to phonetics, how the name appears to sound to some-one's ear. After general schooling people (especially the younger rather than older) could at least spell their own names, so the recording of names would get better after the 1960's. All of these factors can give clues as to who was writing the names and in what period or even situation. English itself was not generally standardised until after 1876 with the Education Act that made education compulsory for school age children. Before that it was the English Translation of the Latin Bible that did a great deal to standardise written English. Before that it was London English that was the ideal of English speech, for business purposes, but the writing could be idiosyncratic until after 1876, and based phonetically on regional accents and level of education of the writer. By the time we get to the indenture and immigration of East Indians in the 1840's, the British had been in India via the British East India Company going on two and half centuries. From (1600-1773) the BEI Co.; from 1773 UK parliamentary control via a Governor-General. By the 1840's the British Army had already standardised the way that Indian names from all the different languages of the recruits should be spelt or transliterated to be more precise. But before that we got: "A dictionary English and Hindostany : to which is annexed a copious and useful alphabetical list of proper names of men, women, towns, cities, rivers, provinces, countries &c. a great majority of which appear to be of Persian, Arabic or Indian origin." Vol.2 by Henry Harris, Surgeon, Madras Army (1759-1822), Madras : printed for the author, 1790, 345p. appx. of proper names, Vol. 1 (containing a grammar) never printed, titled: Guide to the Orthography of Indian Proper Names with a list showing the true spelling of all post towns and villages in India. Printed by William Wilson Hunter, Calcutta,187,pp.146. Office of the Superintendent of Govt. By the 1870's we get: "The duty of English-speaking Orientalists in regard to united action in adhering generally to Sir William Jones's Principles of Transliteration, especially in that case of Indian Languages : with a proposal for promoting a Uniform International Method of Transliteration so far at least as may be applicable to Proper Names." By Monier Monier-Williams, 1870, 21p. I do not know if it was published because there is a note at head of page: "Rough proof, not yet ready for printing off". And: "A Guide to the Orthography of Indian Proper Names with a list showing the true spelling of all post towns and villages in India." By William Wilson Hunter, British Academy London. Calcutta, 1871, 146 p. Office of the Superintendent of Govt. Author. And: "Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book, with Hindustanee romanized names ... Eighth edition, revised. By Robert Flower Riddell Calcutta : Thacker, Spink & Co. 1877, 596 p. By 1917 it seems that there was still a need to deal with Arabic and Persian based names, and hence this is relevant to the way in which Muslim names may have been spelt from c. 1870, or before, allowing for the time-lag between practice and formalisation. So we get: "The British academy transliteration of Arabic and Persian; report of the committee appointed to draw up a practical scheme for the transliteration into English of words and names belonging to the languages of the Nearer East." By H. Milford, Oxford university press 1917? 17 p. Published for the British Academy, London. Notes: From the Proceedings of the British academy, vol. VIII. Preface signed, C. J. L. stated that: The system "practically agrees with that adopted more than fifty years ago by the government of India for place-names in official use and for the names of soldiers in the Indian army, with such minor modifications as experience from time to time showed to be desirable." The above references, I think would be useful for seeing how the names would have been transliterated before and after the East Indian Indentured Immigrants got to the British Colonies. I hope all the above makes a further contribution to the Topic. Richard ==== CARIBBEAN Mailing List ==== To unsubscribe from the list send the word "unsubscribe" (without the quotes) as the only text in the body of an email message to CARIBBEAN-L-request@rootsweb.com for the list mode or CARIBBEAN-D-request@rootsweb.com if you are subscribed to the digest. --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.489 / Virus Database: 288 - Release Date: 6/10/03 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.489 / Virus Database: 288 - Release Date: 6/10/03