I have been involved for a while, to a lesser or greater degree, in family history research but this is usually facilitating it for others. I have not really explored my own to any great depth. My blood family’s history (the Bhotes, originally from near Poona in India) has been transmitted to me in legend and story rather than through documentary sources. The trail ends up in undergrowth just beyond the boundaries of living memory.
My oldest remembered ancestor was a teacher and we have a portrait of him (not older than the latter quarter of the 19th century). When I reflect on the fragility of memory I feel needled. I need to talk to my grandmothers and remember what they tell me or it will be ‘lost’ – or rather the memories will never be created. I am now married and my adoptive family are the Goskars. There are not many left in the world and there are only two, my husband and his sister, who keep the name in this country (me through marriage makes three). Thinking about both my blood and adoptive families, I have become interested in the place or trade origins of surnames.
Bhote
All Bhotes are Parsis*, that is from the small community of Zoroastrians** of Persian extraction who settled on the north-west coast of India in the centuries after the successive Arab conquests of Persia from approximately the 8th century. The story about the first Persian emigrés to India is contained in the epic poem, Qessa-e Sanjan. Largely, the Parsis remained familiarly within their own community. Their culture and religion, while adopting many local customs remained distinct. The Parsis were very precocious in adopting surnames foreign to their own traditions (or perhaps these names point to children born of those who were not Parsi, though this would have been frowned upon as the community has until recently remained quite close-knit). So I also have Coopers and Nicholsons in my immediate family. Bhote is not a Persian word as far as I know. The family lore has been that it is the Gujarati word for ‘simpleton’ or ‘stupid’. Clearly this is a family joke and cannot be true but is enigmatic of my family’s bizarre sense of humour. In trying to find other origins for it, I ended up in Tibet, the source of the Bhote Koshi river, well known to white-water rafters and other water-going adrenalin addicts although these parts of the river are found in Nepal. It seems that the river is named after the people known as ‘Bhote‘ (or Bhutia) who comprise about half the population of nearby Bhutan which neighbours Tibet and Nepal but Bhote was also used as a generic term for anyone who followed Tibetan culture or displayed mongolid features.
As interesting as all this was, and continues to be, I don’t feel I am any nearer why part of my family came to have the name Bhote. As far as I am aware there have been no connections between the Parsis and the Bhote people of Bhutan or Tibet but this is just the start of my search. The Parsis were intrepid travellers especially as traders and they faciliated much of the cross Himalaya trade from China to India. Who knows what happened along the way in the foothills around Tibet and Bhutan.
Goskar
The Goskars I am now related to are from Cornwall. They have a coat of arms but we don’t as yet know why or when they acquired it. In unheraldic speak, its shield has a silver background flanked by a horizontal blood-red band across the top and another diagonal from the left of this band to the bottom right of the shield. The horizontal band displays three five-pointed stars (silver) in a row. There are three Cornish choughs in the areas demarkated by the diagnonal band, two in the bottom left, one in the top right section. Some cursory searches have found Goskars in south Wales, Warwickshire, Norfolk and elsewhere and a few years ago one in South Africa. It is an unusual name and does not seem to be of Cornish (linguistically) origin itself. Many people think it sounds Scandinavian, Germanic or Slavic. There is an enormous outcrop of rock off the North Beach in Tenby called Goskar Rock (also spelt Goscar). When we visited the local museum in Tenby they seemed to trace the word to a ‘Saxon’ word for a ploughshare – the main cutting blade of a plough but we have found no reliable references for this to date. Perhaps more intruiguing is the existence of a small village called Goskar now in north-west Poland and called Gostchorze but previously in Germany (the region of Prussia). Someone has written a short history of Goskar in German and published it online. My German is too ropey to understand it well but I am hoping to ask a friend a favour and try and find out more about this village which was and possibly still is a small farming community. What could be the connection between all these places and people? Any?
These are just beginnings. My searches have demonstrated how unexpected some results can be – and also how mis-leading they may be. If anyone can help with any of the above, I would be very grateful.
*As in any community there are many disputes about who is and isn’t a Parsi and what is and isn’t their inheritance. As you can see from this article on the Parsis in Wikipedia, there is much variation in belief as to the culture and ethnicity (especially the latter) of the Parsis.
**Here the link is to Avesta.org which has probably been the best regarded site on Zoroastrianism (providing texts, lists of resources, glossaries, etc) on the web. However there are many others projecting different ideas about the religion(s) so go browse and make your own mind up.
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