History
Banerjees are Rarhi Kulin Brahmins of the Sandilya gotra, who are considered the highest caste in Bengal alongside Mukherjees, Chatterjees and Gangulis. They are descendents of Bhattanarayana, originally from Uttar Pradesh. During the Bengal renaissance and Young Bengal movement, some Bandyopadhyays converted to Christianity and anglicized their name as "Banerjee" or "Bonnerjee". Others anglicized their name without converting. Recent genetic studies have shown that a high percentage of the Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1a occurs among these people, in common with West Bengal Brahmins (72%).
"Indian (Bengal) and Bangladeshi: Hindu (Brahman) name, the first element of which, Ban-, is a shortened form of the village name Bandoghat. The final element -jee is derived from jha (greatly reduced form of Sanskrit upadhyaya ‘teacher’); thus, Banerjee ‘teacher from the village of Bandoghat’. In Bengali names formed with -jee, the initial element is believed to indicate a village granted by Ballal Sen, a legendary ancient king of Bengal, to the ancestor of the person bearing the surname. A Sanskrit version of this name, Vandyopadhyaya, was coined later, from the elements vandya ‘venerable’ + upadhyaya ‘teacher’. "
— Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4
Read more about this topic: Banerjee
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)