August, you have made another erroneous assumption by subscribing to the uncorrected but age old and widespread myth that some Goans anglicized their surnames upon relocating to India for pecuniary gain in the British India services and administration. Even Valmiki glossed over this factual error (they bent their backs but didn't break their spines) perhaps also beleiving it to be true.
Let me lay some background to make clear why this wasn't the case. The Raj would have been a pretty superficial ruling class to have fallen for the ruse that with a name change the Goans would have suddenly acquired the characteristics that Anglo-Indians were known for: boldness, bravery, courage and loyalty that the Brits then valued. The colonials were anything but superficial, else they would not have conquered and ruled India with a mere 100,000 British men. There was an unusually high ratio of Goans in the officer and ultimately senior officer cadre of the British-Indian armed, police and civilian services like Railways, Posts, Telephone and Telegraph and Dockyards because these were mostly from elite Goan families who went to the same schools as the Brits and Anglo Indians and studied, boxed, polo-ed and sported their way to the administrations upper ranks. There was no way a change from Barreto to Barrett could have made a Goan General or a Goan Chief Secretary from those days' ICS which in general standards far exceeded today's IAS. So why did some Goans change their family names? I submit that it was merely a flavor of the times, a desire to fit in. The same reason why the late Shiv Sena supremo would change from his ancestral Thakre to the English Thackeray. The same as in modern India the father of my neighborhood's Goan beauty took on the moniker of Sankhwalker. The latterwas the elite Catholic Goan desire to harken back to their elite Goan Hindu roots. The middle class as a rule didn't have time for this. Having said this there was my Byculla neighbor's uncle who went from Fernandes to Ferdes because he was a popular swing band leader playing at leading hotels and the latter would have sounded more impressive to the higher class crowd frequenting five stars in those days (not for the status he acquired which was on pure musical merit). Another reason is that the British themselves found the anglicized names more famililiar and easier to pronounce and would hint to a Goan Railway Divisional Manager (a high post) that Francisco could be much easier on the ears as a Francis without losing it's flavor. In fact while the Brits left such name changes to the bearers' option in British India, the poor UP or Bihari indentured immigrant to Guyana or Trinidade was simply "converted" on official documents to Persaud from Prasad and Naraine from Narayan. Hope I have cleared the name-change air. Roland. Toronto. Sent from Samsung Mobile
