And something else

 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 recognised by the fact they wore the hat. I doubt there is anyone around now who could tell us.

I like many people have had my DNA analysed by Ancestry.com but was rather disappointed in the results or lack of as the case maybe. I uploaded my 'Ancestry' dna file to GEDmatch who did a more intensive analysis. The give you a series of Admixtures which can tell you all kinds of stuff that you need to be a genius egghead to understand. One of these 'Admixtures' gives me a hit on 12 chromosomes for Indo-Iranian. Indo-Iranian covers an area north of Afghanistan that includes Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The upshot is whatever the origin of our name, it seems it is most likely definitely 'Persian'( I'm not sure that sentence makes grammatical sense but who cares, I am sure you get my drift). 

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