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In part I of "Armenian First Names Through the Ages," we explored the world of Armenian first names up until the end of the nineteenth century. Our guide was Hratchia Adjarian’s magisterial dictionary of names. In part II, we focus on the twentieth century, a period when major social changes led some names to be abandoned and others to emerge for the very first time.
Names are often the starting point for any family history project. They populate our family trees. They appear on postcards and letters from long ago. And, if we are lucky, they live on in our family lore. Even if we know little else about our ancestors, we may know their names, and this knowledge is much more significant than we might expect. Not only do names tether us to our past, but they also offer us a window into history beyond our own families, helping us to understand the cultural contexts into which our ancestors were born.
Somewhere deep in the Armenian imaginary lies the idea that all Armenians in the past were perfectly proficient speakers, readers, and writers of Armenian. As the thinking goes, these model Armenians would have had no need for classes or books or apps like many of us do today. Armenian was not a language they learned; it was a language they just knew.  Lord Byron (1788-1824) Armenian history has tended to lionize figures like Lord Byron, an Englishman who briefly set his sights on mastering Armenian in the nineteenth century. But it rarely shines a spotlight on the scores of Armenians in the past who were born into languages other than Armenian and spent years of their lives learning it and making it their own. Also just right of the spotlight stand all those who grew up speaking Armenian as children and tasked themselves with learning to read and write in it later in life.
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