MANGASAR(Mankasar): From Armenian
manuk "child" and Persian
sar "head", "mount"
i.e. "head of children", "teacher".
It is out of use now, only the surname
Mangasaryan is met.
and
MANUCHAR: From Azerbaijan
name Manucher (Old Persian Manuchikhr),
which means "from the kin of Manu
God". This name is very common in
Georgia. We also have the surname Manucharyan.
I do not know which explanation(s) is/are
correct, but it is possible that they
are both correct. Armenians commonly change
their surnames for various (including
socio-political) reasons, and it is possible
that the Mangkasar clan changed their
name to Manucharian in order to appear
more Persian during a period when Persia
ruled relevant parts of Armenia.
The page http://armenian.name/index.php?a=list&d=1&t=dict&w1=Z
states as follows:
ZOHRAB: From Persian name Suhrab
which came from "Shahname"
by Firdusi. It was also used as Zurab,
Surab for short (surkh "red"
and ab "water", "bright").
The corresponding surname is Zohrabyan.
Traditionally, Armenian
children receive one Christian name when
baptized. The second name is the
Christian of her/his father....
The suffix -ian denotes 'son or daughter
of'. The suffix -iants denotes 'of
the family of'.
One manuscript claims that the famous
Persian poet Firdusi himself was a member
of the Zohrab family.
Being a Christian family in a Moslem
country, it is said to have refused the
Persian throne on two occasions -- the
first being in "ancient history"
and the second being in the 18th Century
There is a town which apparently used
to be called Zhrap
near Kars, just across the Turkish border
from present-day Armenia.
According to the
book by Armèn Joseph, Zohrab
was a descendant of the Mangkasar meliks.
He was born in Yerevan, Armenia, in about
1580, and died in New Julfa, Isfahan, Iran,
in about 1620. "Zohrab" is a common Persian/Iranian
first name -- cf. the poem "Sohrab and Rustum",
by Matthew Arnold.
The first ancestor
of the Zohrab family. His simple tombstone
is to be found in the common cemetery
of New Julfa, on which only the word 'Zorabini'
is inscribed. No date of his death is
mentioned, but from the dates on the tombstones
of his sons can be inferred that the year
of his death was about AD 1620" -- extract
from the original Armenian.
The former Zohrab house in
New Julfa is located in Little Shahents
Street.
Many Armenians, Jews, and
Syrians were transported in about AD 1605
by Shah
Abbas I of Persia from Armenia, which
he and Turkey had partitioned, to West Persia
and the general area of his new capital,
Isfahan. New
Julfa is now the Armenian quarter of
Isfahan, named after the town of Julfa,
on the Silk Road, which was famous for its
Armenian silk crafts. The Armenians
were also known as merchants and artists,
as well as tradesmen. The Shah wanted
his country to be able to process the raw
silk that it produced -- rather than exporting
it to Turkey and then re-importing the finished
product fromTurkey. He also wanted to depopulate
the border region near Turkey, for security
reasons.
An
article in Wikipedia (as at 31st October
2009) states, in relation to Shah Abbas
I:
By 1605, however, he
realized that he was unable to defend
the territory along the Aras River from
incursions by the Ottomans. Abbas' solution
was to evacuate the region, undertaking
a scorched earth policy in order that
the region's wealth and population would
not fall into Ottoman hands.
I have divided Zohrab's known
descendants somewhat arbitrarily as follows:
