Family Names and Anthropological and Genetic Polymorphisms of the Population

Abstract

The present work is dedicated to the study of the mid-sized Chaganava family and is based on archival and field ethnographic materials. Its main purpose is to find out what determined its size and whether the identified factors (marriage, infertility, premature death, spread of communicable infectious diseases) can be called drifting.

The study of 31 genealogies of Chaganava family revealed the following: despite the location of 31 Chaganava families in the same ecological environment and the influence of similar negative factors, they differ in sex ratio at birth, especially in the fifth generation, when women and boys are born in equal numbers, or often women are born more, and this has led to the disappearance of some families of Chaganava.The main causes of death are a wide range of infectious diseases (smallpox, measles, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cholera) and inflammation (inflammation of the lungs and brain); According to the structure of mortality, Chaganavas could have been really migrated from Svaneti, since in Samegrelo they experienced negative factors, as evidenced by the low average life expectancy and high mortality of children.

Genealogical data show that among all Chaganava children: 15.6% of males and 16.5% of females died in infancy before reaching marriageable age; 21.6% of men and 28.9% of women have never been married; infertility occurs in men 6.56 times more often than in women (5.8% and 14.1%, respectively). Thus, 43.0% of men and 59.5% of women did not participate in reproduction.

In the metric records, a marriage is mentioned between the peasant Meliton Chaganava (36 years old), son of Malakia and the peasant Elisabeth (23 years old) the same Salome, daughter of Vane Chaganava.

As for the drifting, the random event could only be the birth of a boy or a girl. Despite the difficult picture of mortality, its structure leaves room for continuation and reproduction. If in subsequent generations in all families more than 2 sons are born, Chaganavas can be doubled in 2-3 generations.