Reading up on the geography and anthropology of the West Himalayas/Bangladesh and it’s peoples… and to a lesser extent their religions, and that of Normandy’s and of Angeln‘s, whence my great-grandparents and prior, derive from.
Himalayan x Bangali (Bengali: বাঙালি [baŋali]) … what you get when those either side of the Western Himalayan plateau keep getting busy with it.
Many anthropologists believe’ that the Bangali nation makes a vastly mixed race and one of the oldest groups of humans inhabiting this region. These ancient people lived at various places of Bengal by occupying different habitats (Janapadas) and got mixed with each other over the centuries. Stone Age tools found in the region indicate human habitation for over 20,000 years. Remnants of Copper Age settlements, including pit dwellings, date back 4,000 years. Bengal was settled by Austroasiatics, Tibeto-Burmans, Dravidians and Indo-Aryans in consecutive waves of migration.
Agrawalas are originally a Vaishnav Bania class from Marwar, Rajasthan, India… their name is derived from their king, Maharaja Agrasen… Agrawal means “children of Agrasen” or “people of Agroha”.
Maharaja Agrasen was a legendary Indian king of Agroha, a city of traders, during the Solar-Ikshvaku dynasty in the 10th century BCE. Some historians believe that the Agrawalas, who make up 1% of the Indian population, originally hail from Haryana, India… the claimed location of the Vedic Brahmavarta region, known as the place where the “good” people are born, with “goodness” being dependent on location rather than behaviour. During the Mughal rule, and during the British East India Company administration, some Agrawals migrated to Bihar and Kolkata, who became the major component of the Marwaris.
Normans (Norman: Normaunds; French: Normands; Old Norse: Norðmaðr) wore luxurious ‘effeminate’ styles, men curled their hair and were clean shaven… this explains the family penchant for parties, then.
The Normans that invaded England in 1066 came from Normandy in Northern France. However, they were originally Vikings from Scandinavia. From the eighth century Vikings terrorized continental European coastlines with raids and plundering. The proto-Normans instead settled their conquests and cultivated land. Over time they assimilated into medieval European society, abandoned paganism, and were famed for their martial spirit and eventually for their Catholic piety, becoming exponents of the Catholic orthodoxy of the Romance community into which they assimilated.
Angles (Old English: Ængle, Engle; German: Angeln) are a Germanic people of unknown origin. Their name seems to be connected with Angeln, a modern district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
First mentioned by Tacitus (in the Germania) around AD 98, the Angles could be related to the Teutones of Pliny and Strabo in the early first century AD, forming a group known as the Ingaevones with the Chauci and the Cimbri… the ‘Ingaevones’ itself may be a derivative of Angles. It could be seen that the tribal name ‘Angle’ probably originates from ‘anghu’ (meaning ‘life, the world, the people of the world’) so the Angles were the ‘people of the world’ plus a standard ‘-el’ diminutive being added at the end of the word (‘ang- -el’). That in turn implies that they, the Angles, were members of the Ingvaeones… though families with the surname English, or it’s variants, are generally Norman.