Re: Download My Name Is Khan Sub Indo
Harriet Wehrenberg
Khan is an adopted surname, especially popular in Pakistan and parts of India. It literally means "Leader" in Turkic languages, and can be roughly translated to "King." Genghis Khan can be translated to King Genghis without too much quibbling, so think of the surname Khan to be similar to the English surname King (As in Martin Luther King, Jr.)
It came to the Indian subcontinent by way of Timur and the Timurid dynasty, who were Islamic - the surname Khan as a result has associations with Islamic ethnic identity in Pakistan and India (it's not a label, though - there are Sikh, Hindu and Christian folks with the surname Khan as well.)
An interesting starting point is the essay "The Story of the Khans" by Dr Satyakam Phukan - though not scholarly in itself, it does offer an accessible overview of the history of the name, and present avenues for further research.
When talking about Mongols, one has to remember that later Khans of Ilkhanate and Golden horde converted to Islam and thus their trends and traits were absorbed into wider Islamic hegemony especially in their domains which included Central Asian states, Afghanistan, Persia etc. (Notably, during Mongol invasions, Muslims referred to them as Turks, not Mongols).
Major difference between title and surname is that title is pronounced with a nasal N sound (Like the French Pronounce city of Caen, except that in this case C is not the hard K sound, but it is instead like the Russian X sound) while the name is pronounced like normal n sound.
Pashtuns are supposed to be descendants of White Huns. Hun in its original pronunciation is Khun so one can assume that at some point it became Khan. Afghan rulers (Sometimes Turkic, sometimes Pashtun) frequently attacked and conquered Indian regions and many Afghans actually settled down in India for example the Lodhis, Roheilas, Ghurids etc. So we have their descendants carrying Khan as surname as well.
There is another theory that Khan is actually a distorted form of Jewish name Cohen but it is not very plausible because Pashto language is Indo-Iranian and implying that they have Semitic descent sounds illogical to me. One also has to bear in mind Afghanistan was also ruled by Mongol Ilkhanate so it might be that local populace picked it up from their Mongol overlords.
Then we have the third aspect. The new converts to Islam from indigenous Indians changed their names to Islamic names as profession of their new faith. Most added "Muhammad" to their names as prefix and some went to add "Khan" to their names as a suffix. Khan is not islamic in itself but it was associated with ruling class and military which was Persian/Turkic in origin and thus bore such names and titles. For example a guy named Muhammad Ali Khan won't be called Muhammad by his friends and family because that's not his name. Ali is his name and Khan is his surname.
As to is there a genetical relation between Mongol Khans and your khans, it is not entirely out of Question. With centuries of Turkic rule on India and Mongol rule on Afghanistan, it can only be expected that different races did mingle together. Even the royal family was not exempt of it. For example, see the following portrait of Emperor Babur, founder of Mughal Empire. You will notice, he has typical Mongol/Uzbek Turkic facial features:
It must be noted that modern people who claim descent from Mughuls or other central Asian nobles in India do not use Khan as surname. They simply use Mughul or their tribe name. For example one of the most eminent Indian female writers, Ismat Chughtai uses her clan name as surname, which signifies descent from Chagatai Mongols.
Actually, what I learned in my college history class is that Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire, actually claimed that he was the descendant of Genghis Khan. This might be why Khan is a popular Muslim name. Descendants of Babur may have adapted their surname to Khan.
Khan (/xɑːn/) is a surname of Turko-Mongol origin,[1] today most commonly found in parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Iran. It is derived from the historic title khan, referring to military chief or royalty. It originated as a hereditary title among nomadic tribes in the Central and Eastern Eurasian Steppe during antiquity and was popularized by Turkic dynasties in the rest of Asia as well as in Eastern Europe during the medieval period.
The name's earliest discovered usage as a title for chiefs and for monarchs dates back, respectively, to the Xianbei and the Rourans, two proto-Mongolic societies in Inner Asia during antiquity; in the Pannonian Basin and Carpathian Mountains and their surrounding regions of Central and Southeast Europe, the title was used by the Pannonian Avars and the early Bulgars during the early medieval period before being more widely spread by various Muslim chieftains in a region spanning the empires centred in modern-day Turkey and Crimea to those in the Indian subcontinent.[2][3]
The surname Khan is occasionally found among people of Turkic and Mongolic descent, but it is far more common among Muslims in South Asia.[4][5] Khan as a last name is also used by Kashmiri Hindus, native to the Kashmir Valley of the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.[6][7]
As of 2014[update], Khan is one of the most common surnames worldwide, shared by over 22 million people in Asia and 23 million people worldwide.[8] It is the surname of over 108,674 British Asians, making it the 12th-most common surname in the United Kingdom.[9]
Rizwan Khan, a Muslim, grew up with his brother, Zakir, and his widowed mother, Razia, in a middle-class family in Borivali, Mumbai. His autism leads to special tutoring from a reclusive scholar and extra attention from his mother, all of which leads to a heightened level of jealousy from Zakir, who eventually leaves his family for a life in San Francisco. Despite this, Zakir sponsors Rizwan to come and live with him after their mother's death. Zakir's wife Haseena diagnoses Rizwan as having Asperger syndrome. Rizwan also begins to work for Zakir. He meets a Hindu woman Mandira Rathod and her young son Sameer, born from a previous marriage. Despite Zakir's uncertainty, they marry and live in the fictional Banville, adopting Rizwan's surname as theirs. They also live next door to the Garrick family; Mark Garrick the father is a journalist, Sam is best friends with their young son, Reese.
The Khans' perfect existence gets disrupted following the September 11 attacks. Mark goes to cover the war in Afghanistan but dies there. At the same time, the Khans begin to experience the post-9/11 prejudice, and Reese begins to avoid and eventually turn against Sam when Mark is killed while covering the war in Afghanistan. In turn, Sam attempts to reconcile with Reese, which one day leads to a confrontation between the two that leads to an eventual fight on a soccer field, where a bunch of older students attack Sam, despite Reese's pleas for them to stop, which falls on deaf ears. One of them kicks a football at Sam, rupturing his spleen and killing him. A grieving Mandira starts to blame Rizwan, stating that Sam died solely because of Rizwan's surname. Consequently, when Rizwan asks what he can do to help, Mandira sarcastically tells him that to be back together, he has to tell the people and President of the United States that his name is Khan and he is not a terrorist.
Rizwan, taking her seriously, thus sets out on a road trip to first meet President George W. Bush and later President-elect Barack Obama. He travels to the fictional Wilhemina, Georgia, and befriends Mama Jenny and her son Joel. While at a mosque in Los Angeles, he overhears violent rhetoric from a doctor, Faisal Rehman who is quoting religious texts, and angrily defies Faisal's statements before walking out to drop a message for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While waiting in a crowd at UCLA to meet President Bush, he says, "My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist!", repeatedly. He is arrested due to misinterpretation as "I am a terrorist."
Mandira joins Rizwan in Georgia. At the moment she arrives, Rizwan is stabbed by one of Faisal Rehman's followers who accuses him of being a traitor to Islam, and is hospitalized. Rizwan survives and meets Obama, who tells him: "Your name is Khan and you are not a terrorist". Rizwan in turn tells that not only him, his son Sameer was not a terrorist. Obama apologizes to him for the problems that happened to them and praises Rizwan for upholding humanity.
Khan has stated that due to his last name and religion, he (like Rizwan Khan) is frequently subject to excess security checks at airports. On 14 August 2009, Khan arrived in the United States to promote My Name Is Khan and to participate in South Asian-related events around the country (including Indian Independence Day). Upon arriving at Newark Airport in New Jersey, he was pulled aside by immigration officers after his name popped up on their computers,[193] questioned for over an hour (Khan claims it was at least two hours) about the nature of his visit, and was later released. According to the Times Online, "In Delhi, Timothy J. Roemer, the American Ambassador to India, said that the embassy was trying to 'ascertain the facts of the case.' He added: 'Shah Rukh Khan, the actor and global icon, is a welcome guest in the United States.'"[194][195]
Khan said he was told that it was because "they said my name was common to some name that popped up on the computer."[196][197] The officials asked if he could provide names of people to vouch for him. Khan noted that he "had all the documents; they were asking me where I was going to be staying. I gave the name of FOX people with whom I had finalised a deal a few days ago as contacts." However, because they wanted to check his luggage which the airline had lost, Khan said that he "was taken to a room where many people were awaiting a secondary check on visa, most were South Asians. In fact many officers were reluctantly vouching for me, some people were asking for autographs and a Pakistani fan even said he knew who I was. But the officers said it was procedure and kept taking numbers from me."[196][198]
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