Finding Genghis Khan's Tomb From Space

rossgneumann writes Genghis Khan really, really didn't want anyone to know where he was buried. The soldiers escorting his body to its final resting place killed everyone they passed, killed the people who built the tomb, and then were killed themselves. An elegant solution to this problem bubbled up from two unlikely sources: a man described as a "modern day Indiana Jones" and amateur archaeologists.

Comments

Re:His legacy is 2%

[myowntrueself]

It's not like Khan was his family name and people called him Mr. Khan.

Mongolians don't have 'family names'.

These days they use the 'patronymic' system which was introduced by the Russians, so you have your given name and your fathers given name. Typically the fathers given name is put first, so if your dad was Dave and you are Bob your FULL name would be Dave Bob.

Before the Russian influence Mongolians had their tribal name and their given name but this was 'phased out' by the communists. Until relatively recently no one used their tribal names and many Mongolians forgot them. Even today employers don't record peoples tribal name and its hardly ever used. It appears on birth certificates but not in passports; a modern Mongolian passport will have the fathers given name in the 'surname' field.

This can cause issues for mixed marriages and international travel with children as the name on the childs passport would make little sense to immigration officials in other countries and they might assume that the foreign father travelling with his child isn't the real father and that theres something fishy going on. (ie your name is Dave Smith, your sons name is Bobby. Normally his passport would have his name as "Bobby Smith", but if he was born in Mongolia his passport would have his name as "Bobby Dave". You have to get special dispensation from the director of the passport office to have the name on the passport in conventional, international format.

Under the new regime the state identity papers list the tribal name so everyone has to provide them. Since many people just don't know it they use 'Borjigin' which is Chinggis Khans tribe. Thus the official numbers of this tribe is going up and up even though most of them are not actually biologically from that tribe.