The Alarakia Family of HongKong

 I was rather proud of myself when I came up with a possible origin and meaning for the name Alarakia. Earlier in the blog I talked about the idea it was a Persian name that was made up of various elements and I made it sound very grand indeed. Well what do I know. According to a nineteenth century publication entitled 'Notice sur la Regence de Tunis (Note on the Regency of Tunis)  by J.Henry Dunant the word 'Alarakia' is the name of a small calico hat worn under the 'Chechia'. According to the Collins Dictionary the word 'chechia' a noun meaning 'a cylindrical felt cap with a flat top often with a tassel(similar to a FEZ) and its origin comes from the ancient Persian city of Shash which is now Tashkent in Uzbekistan. This is ancient Silk Road territory.  Now while this may well be true and who am I to argue BUT I prefer my version. Looks like the only thing the two have in common is Persia.  Maybe our Alarakia ancestors took the name because they were r

 I have tried to get to the bottom of Sewjee's arrival in Hong Kong. To be honest it has been very time consuming and not very successful.  What I do know is that the accessible records available for India during the nineteenth century are almost  entirely about  the Anglo/European colonial population, with some about the Eurasian offspring of such. As far as the indigenous Indian and non colonial population is concerned most of the available records are what is given up by the newspapers of the day. A lot of them concern passenger lists and cargo manifests for the middle east and Europe. If you were an Indian and travelled frequently then you would obviously be either a business man/merchant or independently financially secure. It would appear that the name Allarakia and versions of it often appeared on these lists. In the case of the passenger lists it was usually for passage between Bombay and London. Now the spelling of the name Alarakia has thrown me on more than one occasion.

 Whilst going through the many Newspapers and publications of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries I have begun to notice that not only does the spelling of Alarakia differ in many ways, some individual articles are guilty of that trait when referring more than once to the same person. Furthermore I have noticed names like Allarakiabhoy, Mohamedbuoy and Nanjeebhouy along with names such as Peer Mohamed and Peerbhoy  and began to wonder where any such names might fit in the Alarakia family. As best as I can determine use of the name Peer in South Asian cultures is similar to our use of the term  'senior' whilst the word 'bhoy' apparently is the 'Parsi' equivalent of the Indian 'bhai' for brother. So I was thinking are names such as Allarakhiabhoy and Peerbhoy a way of calling someone junior such as Nanjeebhoy Sazon* being the younger brother to Nanjee Sazon?. Like wise someone with the name Peer Mohamed being the 'senior' or elder of a fam