Anna, Annie, and Annais

(A Ramification of the Armenian Genocide)

By Vahe H. Apelian

In memory of my maternal aunt Anna Chelebian I never knew in person.

The name Anna first appeared in the maternal side of our family in the person of my maternal great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother Karoun (Apelian) Chelebian’s mother. Anna was from the Boymoushakian family of Sev Aghbuir (black spring), one of the 12 villages of greater Kessab.

Sometime late 19th century, most probably in autumn when the fields were harvested and the families had stocked the summer’s bounty for the long winter ahead, young Hanno (Hovhannes) Apelian of Keurkune and Anna Boymoushakian of Sev Aghbuir were married. Anna’s father and Hanno’s prominent father Bedir most certainly arranged their marriage. Their wedding festivities would have lasted a week and held in Keurkune, the Apelian family’s ancestral village.  

Meanwhile, a similar ceremony would have capped the wedding festivities at the bride’s home where the women would have congregated and sang a song in the person of the bride thanking her parents for having raised her and articulating her sadness in leaving her parental home and her joy in building her own. Anna’s family would have then helped her mount a decorated horse and would have escorted her to the church in the groom’s village accompanied by a group of the groom’s relatives and friends who would have come to the bride’s house to accompany her to the church.

Hanno’s and Anna’s wedding may have taken place by the Armenian Evangelical rite. Hanno’s influential father Bedir was one of the early advocates for the village to embrace the Armenian Evangelical faith, which had started in Istanbul in 1846. Some of Bedir’s sons, later on, would opt to take their prominent father’s name as their family surname and branch out as the Bedirians of the Apelian family, which continues to this day.

My maternal grandmother Karoun, who would marry Khacher Chelebian, was born into Hanno and Anna Apelian’s traditional family along with her three brothers, Diran, Serop, and Kerop. It also so happened that her brother Kerop eloped and married a girl also named Anna from the Titizian family of Kaladouran who was known in greater Kessab for her beauty and free spirit. Kaladouran is the Kessab’s coastal village where the Titizians have their hamlet named after their family as Titizlek, much like the Manjikian family of Kaladourn who calls its hamlet Manjeklek. 

In time Kerop Apelian left his pregnant wife Anna and their firstborn child Kevork behind in Keurkune under the care of his parents, Hanno and Anna and his sister Karoun and joined his two brothers in New York to have his family join him after settling in the New World. When his pregnant wife gave birth to their second son, Kerop sent word from America to name him James for the family was to join him in America. But that was not to be.

In June 1915, the once young bride and groom but now grandparents, Hanno and Anna were forcefully uprooted from their home along with their daughter Karoun, my maternal grandmother, and their daughter-in-law Anna-the-bride (Anna harse) and her two children Kevork and James. Only my grandmother Karoun and her young nephew James survived the ordeal. The rest fell victims to the first genocide of the 20th century.  Having left by herself, her relatives thought that it was best Karoun was married to the eligible bachelor Khacher Chelbian in their makeshift camp in Deir Attiyeh, a town an hour’s drive north of Syria’s capital city Damascus.

LtoR:Hovhannes, Khacher, Zvart, Antranig, Karoun, Anna Chelebian

After the World War I ended and the Turks, who had occupied Kessab vacated it, my grandmother Karoun and her husband Khacher and her young nephew James, against seemingly insurmountable odds, managed to return to Keurkune and moved into her parental house and resumed their lives anew. The young couple named their last child and second daughter Anna most likely in memory of her maternal grandmother, my grandmother Karoun’s mother Anna (Boymoushakian). Anna’s elder siblings were named Antranig, my mother Zvart, and Hovhannes.

My grandmother Karoun’s nephew James Apelian, whom she raised, married Khatcher Chelebian’s niece, Sirvart Chelebian, and the couple named their first-born daughter Anna as well, most likely in remembrance of the infant’s paternal grandmother Anna (Titizian), Kerop Apelian’s wife. Years later James' son, Kevork George Apelian, immortalized her paternal grandmother in his novel titled “Anna Harse”. 

But, James and Sirvart Apelian’s firstborn daughter Anna died in her infancy. My grandmother’s youngest child Anna also died of pneumonia when she was vivacious seventeen years old beautiful girl and was also buried in the Keurkune’s ancient cemetery next to her father Khatcher who also had died due to pneumonia at the age of 38. Anna’s tombstone reads in Armenian: “Here rests Anna K. Chelebian (1928-1945), “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mathew 5:8).

The name Anna thus became prejudicial in the family but the memory of the two Annas lingered on. My grandmother Karoun ruled out naming Anna any daughter henceforth born in the family at large. Thus, a variation of the name Anna evolved in the persons of my maternal cousin Annie (Chelebian) Hoglind, and in the person of Annais (Apelian) Tootikian. Both of them are now proud mothers and grandmothers.