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'grandfather', 'uncle', and their female equivalents, and others of like

ilk. That means that many people do not know either their father's or

their mother's real name. Nor do many know when they were born.

However, a clue can be got from the name the person goes under: the

name of the week become the first part of their name, for instance, a

man born on Monday will be '

Som

'-something, '

bahadur'

or '

lal

, or a

Friday,

'Sukra

-'something', '

raj'

for instance..

Now to 'castes': I have a theory (and I am in a minority of about

one here) that the traditional '

jats

' were, originally, nicknames. Below

the '

jats

' that we all recognise and, which have often been changed for

recruiting reasons, come

'thars

', immutable 'sub-castes', 'clans' or

'tribes' (depending on which dictionary you use). The 'old' Indian

Army had a hand book of all '

thar'

and

'sub-thar'

of all its soldiers, a

fascinating document. The British Army, in its wisdom, has never felt

the need for such a publication. Reasons for

'jat'

nicknames are

various, I believe – and here I have to admit that my knowledge has

yet to be all-embracing – let us take the name Gurung, Thapa and Rai.

Gurungs, if you delve into Gurung history (and in Gurung language a

Gurung is Tamu) were intimately associated with Bahuns, hill

Brahmans, 'plains men' Brahmans being Jhas. Even one of their sub-

castes, Lamichhané, derived from Lamo Kan, long ears, is found in

both groups.

'Guruko añg'

, 'limb of the guru', is a near enough

rendering. Thapa, found both with Chhetris and Magars, is part of the

verb to 'set up, 'establish', namely

'prasTHAPAna' garnu

. 'Rai' is an

historic Hindu accolade for, I think, bravery. 'Limbu' I know not:

'

Yakthumba'

is their own tongue, its own script was lost but found,

during King Mahendra's reign, by a Scotsman and Parasmani Pradhan,

a Darjeeling linguist when hunting in the British library. Both were

honoured by the king. As an aside and nothing to do with names, the

race of people with the closest DNA to the Limbus are the Tonkinese of

North Vietnam. 'Chhetri', 'Ksatri', as well as 'Rana' – not a normal 'n'

but one Romanised with a dot under the 'n' – have connotations with

the battle field.

In turn you have Sens from 'sena' an army, Mallas from 'malla'

a wrestler and Tamang from, certainly the Cantonese 'ta' to fight and

'ma' a horse. When I was in Tamang country I witnessed

the

annual