Nuristani names

The surname is a plain description. Nuristan is Persian for the land of light, from nur, light, and the ending -estan, land, and the final -i means of or from. A Nuristani is a person from Nuristan, in the way a Kabuli is from Kabul and a Panjshiri from Panjshir. The province was given the name after the conquest of 1895 to 1896, when it ceased to be Kafiristan, so the surname cannot be older than that.

Most Afghans traditionally had no family name at all. A man was known by his own name and his father's, by his tribe, his village, his trade or his title. Surnames came in during the twentieth century, first among families in the cities, the army and the schools, and people usually took one that said where they were from. For Nuristanis who left the valleys the obvious choice was Nuristani. After the conquest many young men from Kafiristan were taken to Kabul and trained for military service, and the name appears early in the army: an officer called Nuristani was serving at Kandahar by 1913.

By the middle of the century it was a familiar name in Kabul. Seven of the fourteen players in Afghanistan's hockey team at the London Olympics of 1948 are listed with the surname Nuristani. Not everyone who carries it is Nuristani by descent, since a family that lived or served in the province might take its name.

The only full account of how the Kafirs named their children was written down by George Scott Robertson, who lived among the Kom at Kamdesh in 1890 and 1891. When a child was born it was put to its mother's breast while an old woman of the family recited the names of its ancestors, one after another: the men of the line for a boy, the women for a girl. The name being spoken at the moment the baby began to feed was its name for life.

Because the choice was left to the child, two brothers could end up with the same name, and then they were told apart as the elder and the younger. Robertson knew a headman called Dan Malik whose son was Kansta Dan, Dan junior.

A person's full name put the father first. Chandlu Astan was Astan the son of Chandlu, and it was the same for women. If the name was a common one the grandfather's was added in front, and very occasionally the mother's was used. A father and son could share a name, so that a man might be called Merik Merik. Torag Merak, said to be the richest man in Kafiristan in Robertson's day, was Merak the son of Torag.

Nicknames did the rest. They were adjectives set in front of the name: red, stout, lame, one-eyed, thin, tall. Robertson met a Lame Astan and a Slender Shyok. Rank had its titles too. A jast was a headman who had earned his place by giving feasts, a mir had the right to sit on a stool out of doors, and the utah was the priest. A woman could hold rank in her own right: Sumri of Kamdesh was a mir.

Above the family is the lineage, and it has a name too. Among the Kom a lineage is called after its founder, with the ending -dara, which Robertson wrote -dari and Strand translates as boys: the Dumu-dara are Dumu's boys. Robertson listed the clans of Kamdesh in his day, among them the Utahdari, the priests' clan, the Demidari, the Garakdari, the Bilezhedari and the Waidari, and among the Kati of the upper Bashgal the Jannahdari, who were the leading clan, and the Barmodari.

In Waygal the ending is -deri: the Let-deri of Zhonchigal are the lineage of Let. The recorded line of one Waygal family runs Wai Din, Ara Din, Ulust, Mogul Kan and then Mohammad Amin. When a lineage in Waygal grew too small to stand alone it was taken into a larger one after a feast and took that lineage's name. These lineage names are still how a Nuristani says who his people are, and they do the work that surnames do elsewhere.

The old names are slipping out of memory. If your grandparents or great-grandparents carried names from before the conversion, or if your family has a name for its lineage, we would like to record them here with the valley they come from. Write to us through the contact page.