Learning a Little More about Sikh Family History Traditions

When I have met people of Sikh ancestry here in the United States, most of them are far enough removed from traditions in Punjab and India that they have not known "how things worked", such as naming practices, who keeps family information, etc., which of course drove this genealogist nuts.  I lucked out last week and found someone who knew a little more and was generous enough to add to my small accumulation of information.

Previously, I knew that men carry the last name Singh ("lion") and women have the name Kaur ("princess"), but that family names exist also.  I had been told that the tradition was for a man to use the name Singh until he married, so someone might be known as Karam Singh.  When he married, Singh would become his middle name and he would add his family name, e.g., Karam Singh Sandhu.

I had always wondered what happened with the women's names.  My guess was that when a woman married, she probably added her husband's family name after Kaur.  So if Raj Kaur married Karam Singh, her name would become Raj Kaur Sandhu.

The woman I spoke to last week had a hyphenated last name and a middle name of Kaur.  Well, I know Kaur is associated with Sikhs.  We had a few minutes, so I asked if she minded me being nosy.  Lucky me, she said it was ok!  I told her the few bits I just wrote about above and in particular that I was wondering about her hyphenated last name after Kaur.

She started out by saying that one of the original ideas behind Sikhism was to eradicate the castes, so that everyone was equal.  That reasoning was behind the names of Singh for men and Kaur for women — everyone would have the same names, no name could take precedence, everyone would be equal.  No surprise, not everyone was on board with this concept, and so, she told me, three different naming traditions now exist.

Those individuals who thought "no castes" was a great idea took on Singh and Kaur, and that's all they used.  They left behind the family names.  So you had the name Singh, and when you married you were still a Singh.

Many people of higher castes weren't as willing to give their names up.  Some who maintained family names used the system I had already learned about, where you take on the family name after marriage.  But some, such as the family of the woman I met, used the family name from birth.  So if a family used this tradition, Karam's name would always have been Karam Singh Sandhu.

What was particuarly amusing about this woman's specific situation is that her hyphenated name was a combination of her family name and that of her husband, who is Muslim.  The naming tradition with which he is familiar dictates that when a woman marries, she takes her husband's given name as her middle name and his family name as her own.  So if I use the names from above as examples (even though they are Sikh names), Raj Kaur would have become Raj Karam Singh (or possibly Sandhu) on marrying Karam Singh.  The reason my acquaintance maintained her own name is that her college degrees are in that name and she was already an established professional.  She told her husband there was no way she was negating that by taking his name and dropping her own.  As a thoroughly modern woman, but one with knowledge of her people's history, she created her own tradition.

I also discovered last week that there are indeed Sikh family genealogists!  When I learned about Hindu family genealogists on the Sanjay Gupta segment of Finding Your Roots in 2012, I suggested at the time that it could mean Sikh family genealogists existed, especially for prominent families.  Well, I was looking up something on Wikipedia, and it led me to another page, and somehow I found a page about Mirasi, the genealogists of India and Pakistan.  The section on the Mirasi of Indian Punjab specifically mentions Sikh subgroups.  Of course, I still don't speak or read Punjabi, Urdu, or any other Indian languages, so it might be difficult for me to communicate with any of these genealogists if I could find them, but I definitely think progress is being made!  One of these days, I am convinced I will find more family information for my stepsons' grandfather (and maybe even prove that their great-great-grandfather really was the headman of the village).

"Finding Your Roots" - Margaret Cho, Sanjay Gupta, and Martha Stewart

Yes, I know I'm behind on posts for Who Do You Think You Are (and I really do intend to catch up, but I've been in training since February 27, which has played hell with my schedule).  And I know that this was the eighth episode of Finding Your Roots, and I haven't commented on any of the earlier ones.  So why am I jumping into the middle like this?

This episode of Finding Your Roots touched me in a very unexpected way.  The focus was on experiences of first- and second-generation Americans.  One of the aspects discussed was how these children born in America have felt cut off from much of their family histories.  One thing in particular that was mentioned was the belief that no records existed that could help them learn more about earlier generations of their families.

My stepsons' grandfather, Karm, was from Khatkar Kalan, Punjab, India.  Along with researching the rest of their family on both sides, I have tried to research Karm's family in India.  One thing I was quickly told by many people, both native-born Indians and people married to Indians, was that there simply aren't records for natives from the period during which India was ruled by Great Britain.  The British barely did any record-keeping for their own people; they totally ignored records on natives.

The only thing close to "records" I had heard of previously were for Hindu families.  When someone in the family died, you went down to the river and spoke to the man who was your family "chronicler" about the death.  He would then remember it and add it to the history of your family, but it was all oral.  He passed on the oral history to his son, who became the new "chronicler."  I even spoke with a professor who was born in Rajasthan about this lack of documentation.  He went back to India years later to try to find some record of his own birth.  Even with the resources available to him at that time, he found absolutely nothing.  He learned that his brother had arbitrarily chosen a birthday for him.

But the researchers for Finding Your Roots found something!  Apparently not all the family histories are oral only.  Two brothers are responsible for Gupta's family chronicle.  The records are only for the men in the family, but they are written and they go back eight generations.  When I saw the book I was in tears.

Karm was Sikh, not Hindu.  I have no idea if similar books might exist for Sikh families.  But just learning that written records from before Partition exist for any native Indians gives me hope.  Karm's family is said to have been prominent (Karm's grandfather was supposed to have been the last "headman" of the village before the British took over).  Important families in other cultures are more likely to leave records documenting their history; why not in Punjab?

And I promise that as soon as I can I'll get back to Who Do You Think You Are? ....