Immigrant Number 51 was a young “brown” Bouree man from Bancoorah, West Bengal reduced to just a single distinctive name, “Persaud” in the 1838 British Guiana (BG) historical files. Taller than average, the 25-year-old Indian was the first of many marked by the mangled moniker who would board the waiting boats over some eight decades, praying and hoping for a better life on the other side of the world.
Derived from the Sanskrit term “prasada” translated as “precious gift” for a sacred religious offering of food, traditionally consumed after ceremonial worship, Persaud and several variants such as Prasad and Persad have since become like the ubiquitous Singh and Khan among the most common surnames of these migrants’ numerous descendants mainly in the former colonies of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.
A few more newly-indentured men from the “Hesperus” sailing barque bore similar names inadvertently merged into a single-word English equivalent, as transliterated from the Hindustani languages by the British shipping agents and officials who registered the labour recruits. “Gungawpersaud” (Gangar Prasad) was listed as a “Tamlee” or Tamil from Cawnpore. However he may not have come from the far northern garrison town of the British East India Company, now known as Kanpur, but rather the small Bengali villages of the same title either in Ramnagar or Hugli (Hooghly).
