Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian 
| |
|---|---|
 Kim in Glendale | |
| Birth name | Kimberly Noel Kardashian |
| Name in Armenian | Քիմ Քարտաշեան |
| Birthplace | Los Angeles |
| Birth date | 21 October 1980 |
| Lived in | Los Angeles |
| Resides in | Calabasas |
| Profession | socialite, television personality, model, actress |
| Languages | English |
| Ethnicities | Armenian, Dutch, Scottish |
| Dialects | Western Armenian |
| Ancestral villages | Karakale |
| Spouses | Damon Thomas, Kris Humphries |
| Relatives | Robert Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Bruce Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Khloé Kardashian, Robert Kardashian Jr., Kylie Jenner, Kendall Jenner |
Kim Kardashian (Քիմ Քարտաշեան) is the daughter of attorney Robert Kardashian. Kim had a relatively unknown first marriage was at the age of 20, to music producer Damon Thomas. That relationship lasted four years, ending in 2004, after which Kim dated R&B singer Ray J, who starred in her infamous sex tape which was leaked to the public in 2007.
Her last name in Armenian means "son of a stonemason." Although only half-Armenian, she states that she "was raised with a huge Armenian influence, always hearing stories of Armenia, eating Armenian food and celebrating Armenian holidays."
Supporter for Recognition of the Armenian Genocide - The Armenian genocide refers to the killing of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. Kardashian has always been a supporter for recognizing the genocide as such and has encouraged President Barack Obama and the U.S. government to consider its acknowledgement.
Family escape to America[edit | edit source]
EXCLUSIVE: Keeping Up With The Kardashians circa 1900! How Kim's ancestors heeded prophet's warning of looming slaughter to escape rural Armenia for a new life in the U.S.
Kim Kardashian's ancestors escaped before Armenian Genocide of 1915 A prophet warned them 'terrible times' and war was coming - and both did More than one million people eventually died in the invasion that followed But Kim's great, great grandfather Saghatel Kardashian heeded prophecy So did Hovhannes Miroyan on the other side of her incredible family tree A hundred years after the atrocity, their distant relatives became TV stars after ancestor left for the U.S. and became a garbage truck driver Kim now planning to visit Armenia on the tragedy's hundredth anniversary MailOnline discovered a treasure trove of pictures of the Kardashian family
By Will Stewart for MailOnline
Published: 03:25 EST, 6 February 2015 | Updated: 10:05 EST, 6 February 2015
The extraordinary escape from the 'Armenian Genocide' of Kim Kardashian's ancestors - thanks to a 'prophet' who urged them to uproot to America - can be revealed today for the first time.
MailOnline has unearthed a treasure trove of images showing the reality TV star's ethnic Armenian forebears who fled the tsarist Russian empire in the early 20th century, many of whom obeyed the advice of the sage.
Known at the time as the Kardaschoffs, in Russian style, the family made their way from their home village of Karakale in the late 19th Century to German ports. From there, they travelled to a new life in America on the passenger vessels SS Brandenberg and SS Koln.
By doing so, they escaped the triple horror of the First World War from 1914-18, the 'Armenian Genocide' starting in 1915 - exactly a century ago this year - and the Russian Revolution in 1917.
One hundred years after the deadly holocaust decimated their ancestral home, the Kardashians have become one of the most influential families in America.
The most famous of which is Kim who has chosen this year, on the hundredth anniversary of the atrocity, to visit Armenia for the first time.
But her lavish lifestyle, the expensive houses, an army of followers who hang on her every tweet, the marriage to a musical superstar would not exist if her ancestors had ignored the warning of a child 'prophet'.
Among those fleeing Erzurum - then in Armenia, and ruled by last Russian Tsar Nicholas II was family patriarch Hovhannes Miroyan and Kim's great great grandfather, born in 1844. He married the doughty Luciag Chorbajian, born in 1853.
The couple wed in Erzurum, which is now in Turkey, in 1867 but escaped along with their daughter Vartanoosh Mironyan, born in 1886, in the early 20th century.
Vartanoosh's distinctly blonde daughter Haigoohi Arakelian - known as Helen, born in America in 1917, the year the Bolshevik Revolution rocked the Russian Empire - was Kim's grandmother, who later married into the Kardashian clan.
The glamorous and 'dynamic' Helen wed Arthur who ran the largest meat-packing business in southern California.
Helen's son Robert, a celebrity lawyer who died of oesophageal cancer in 2003, married Kris Houghton and fathered the 21st Century's biggest reality TV stars Kourtney, Khloe, Robert Jr and most famous of all - Kim.
Their mother Kris eventually married Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner and together they raised two more TV personalities, Kendall and Kylie.
The flight to freedom of Arthur's parents and grandparents from the village of Karakale - today a snow-covered and entirely Muslim outpost in eastern Turkey where the stone ruins of the old Armenian homes still stand - came later than many in this community.
It was as if they had sought to cling on against the rising ethnic violence and persecution.
The Kardashians - or Kardaschoffs - like other branches of Kim's paternal kith and kin were ethnic Armenian, but they were also religious rebels, at odds with the orthodox faith in their homeland.
They had already fled persecution once before, from another location deeper in Armenia.
'The village bullies harassed and insulted them, dug into their tombs and (violated) the corpses of the deceased - hanging them on trees,' explained Joyce Keosababian-Bivin, whose ancestors also came from Karalala, and whose family is linked by marriage to the Kardashians.
'Because of that they wrote a letter of complaint to Nicholas II.'
The tsar decreed that they could move to Karakale, close to the Russian military settlement, where initially they were safe in what was 'a modern village, with beautiful buildings and wide streets'.
Here, they became close to incoming Russian protestants against the Russian Orthodox Church.
They were a sect called the Molokans, literally translated as 'milk-lovers', so-called because they drank milk, and other banned foods, on fast days.
Some were known as Jumpers, who leapt in the air, raising their hands high, during church services. They were pacifists and, crucially, adhered to the power of prophecy.
The legend has it that in the 1850s, an 11-year-old Efil Klubnikin penned an apocalyptic forecast despite being apparently illiterate.
'Those who believe in this will go on a journey to a far land, while the unbelievers will remain in place,' the boy prophesied. 'Our people will go on a long journey over the great and deep waters...people from all countries will go there.
'There will be a great war. All kings will shed blood like great rivers. Two steamships will leave to cross the impassable ocean.'
In the first years of the 20th century, Efim renewed the warning that he made to stunned believers in Karakale as a child, saying his premonition was now coming to pass.
'Efim called a meeting, he invited the elders from all the Molokan villages including the two elders of the Armenian Molokan church. He prophesied this was the time for them to leave Russia as there were terrible times coming, especially for the Armenians,' said Ms Keosababian-Bivin.
Images he scrawled led locals to believe they should cross the Atlantic to the United States, but this young diviner also indicated they should not stop there, but trek to the west coast. He pointed them towards Los Angeles.
America was, he said, 'a land of the living' while mass slaughter would engulf their homeland.
Presciently, he urged them to go quickly - as he himself would do - and cautioned: 'The doors will close, and leaving Russia will be impossible.'
Many families sold up their homes and land at knockdown prices, or simply fled, to escape the coming horrors.
It is substantially due to the prophecy that many of Kim's forebears came to Los Angeles, a city where the clan thrived and made their name.
But many were jeered as they left Karakale, now known as Merkez Karakale, and mocked for their belief in the prophesy of coming doom.
Poignantly, the village is almost in the shadow of the magnificent volcanic Mount Ararat, supposedly the resting place of Noah's Ark when the world faced an earlier catastrophe, a fact which led some of the Armenians to believe they would be safe here.
Yet all those who stayed in Karakale would pay with their lives.
Records show that Arthur Kardashian's father and Kim's great grandfather, Tatos, was born in Karakale and later became known as Tom.
Tatos heeded the warning and in September 1913, at the age of 17, found himself boarding the SS Koln from Bremen, Germany to Boston.
He opened a rubbish collection business in Los Angeles and wed another Karakale Jumper immigrant, Hamas Shakarian, who travelled with him on the cramped passenger steamer from Germany.
A few weeks earlier, Tatos' parents Saghatel 'Sam' Kardashian, then 49, and Hrepsema 'Horom' Yuzbashian, then 43, had travelled on the SS Brandenburg from Bremen to Philadelphia, arriving on 2 August 1913.
'Steerage passengers were jammed together much like cargo down below,' said researcher Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewska.
Their escape would undoubtedly save their lives. With the world engulfed in war, and Russia beset by revolution, the forces of the Ottoman empire moved in on the region.
It became embroiled in what is variously known as the Armenia Genocide, the Armenian Massacres, and the Armenian Holocaust.
Estimates vary but it is claimed around one million to 1.5m people perished in mass killings between 1915 and 1923.
Significantly, perhaps, Kim has chosen this year to travel to Armenia, the land of her forefathers, for the first time.
The Turkish government refuses to accept the label 'genocide', though many historians, international organisations and almost two dozen countries recognise it as such.
Britain and the US have not done so, arguably to avoid upsetting key NATO ally Turkey.
'When the Turkish army marched through the area in 1917, they committed unspeakable atrocities against the Armenian people in all the villages, including Karakale', said Ms Keosababian-Bivin.
'The Armenia Genocide began and every inhabitant of Karakala perished,' wrote Matthew W Tallman, citing another Kim relative, Demos Shakarian, whose grandfather of the same name became a prominent Pentecostalist preacher in Los Angeles and was also Kim's great great grandfather.
'Efim's prophetic words saved many lives in Karakale.'
Another account recorded: 'The great World War One broke out, and in the terrible onslaught, when Turkey overran Armenia, every soul in Karakala was wiped out.'
Kim went on the record in 2012 to call for a wider understanding of the tragedy that befell the Armenian people.
'It's time to recognise the Armenian Genocide,' she said. 'Until this crime is resolved, the Armenian people will live with the pain of what happened to their families.'
In midwinter, the tiny village is deserted. It retains a 19th century feel, with horses still used by local farmers, as in the time of old Sam Kardashian's time.
The scars of the past run deep, and now even professing links to Kim seems a matter of controversy here.
A diplomatic source said: 'You must understand that with centenary of the genocide coming in April, and the Turks are deeply sensitive about anything that can act as a focus to the slaughter of the past.'
There is also deep tension between the Turks and Kurds in the east of the country.
One resident of Karakala, Muhammer Copur, 30, claimed two years ago that he was distantly related to Kim, because their great great grandmothers were sisters.
Then a village shopkeeper, he found the linked after scouring the web on the village's only computer, it was claimed.
'It's amazing - everyone is jealous,' he said at the time, though the name of the ancestor was not disclosed. 'All the villagers now want to know if they are related to famous sexy millionaires too. I'm hoping Kim will invite me to the US'.
He added that his dream was: 'All I want is a cup of tea with her.'
Two years on, and he pours cold water on the story, now denying there is any truth in it.
'I don't want to speak about Kim Kardashian because she is so famous,' he said. 'If I say something, I can have problems.'
Now working at a university in the nearby city of Kars, he said: 'I don't want to speak about those topics because I'm under pressure from other villagers, and from the Turkish press.'
He said that his family only moved to the village 'some time between maybe 1920 and 1930' - long after Kim's ancestors had left.
His family are Terekeme, also known as Qarapapaq, he said, a Muslim group traditionally speaking a dialect of Azerbaijani.
If - somehow - there is truth that one of Kim's former ancestors in Karakale remained behind, survived the 'genocide', and wed into the Copur clan - which would have required her converting to Islam - it would mean dozens of the settlement's present residents would also be related.
Almost half the homes in the village today are occupied by his extended family members.
His cousin Atilla Copur, head of the village administration, went on local TV to discount the links to Kim, however.
'They said that Kim Kardashian's family was living in the village. But we don't know if it's true,' he said.
There are no documents which prove a family connection between the Kardashians and the Copur's, he insisted, saying that archive searches had been conducted in Turkey.
Yet there is no doubt the family did live here in his village, before being forced away by the real threat of barbarism.
And existing Armenian gravestones in the local cemetery - though not visibly connected to the Kardashians - are evidence of this link.
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Kim says her butt is real[edit | edit source]
Kim Kardashian denies she underwent surgery to improve her bottom, insisting it is her ethnicity that gives her curves.
She says "Everyone now says I have a fake butt or butt implant. I'm Armenian; you should see all the women in my family. The women have bigger breasts and bigger butts. That's how I was born. I can't help it. I'm not gonna fight it.
"I definitely need to work out more and tone up, but I'm proud of my body."
Good girl busts out (excerpts)[edit | edit source]
PRIM KARDASHIAN - GOOD GIRL BUSTS OUT - ALL OVER; KARDASHIAN FOR FASHION
Danica Lo
The New York Post
November 8, 2007 Thursday
...
Kardashian is one of those signs of the end of civilizations: the celebrity famous for nothing. She and her posterior popped up on the radar when her soon-to-be ex, rapper Ray J, leaked a sex tape that immediately caught the public, um, imagination. Spawning endorsements, modeling gigs and the aforementioned hit TV show, a year and a half later all the attention has transformed Kardashian into a red-carpet force to be reckoned with.
"I was always in a relationship, and when I broke up with my boyfriend, I started hanging out with my friends again - some of whom are in the spotlight," she explains about her meteoric rise to fame.
But while other star-lites burn out generating headlines and rap sheets for the tabloids, Kardashian - who doesn't drink or smoke - actually seems pretty wholesome. Playboy aside.
...
"No one believes I'm a size 0," Kardashian tells us, as she tries on several Diane von Furstenberg frocks.
Kardashian is the ArmenianGerman-Irish-American daughter of late O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian and fitness equipment infomercialist Kris "Married to the Bruce" Jenner. She grew up with three fullsiblings (Kourtney, Khloe and Robert), two half-sisters (Kylie and Kendall), and four stepsiblings (Casey, Burt, Brandon and Brody). She began playing against type in high school, when she got an after-school job. Working at Body, the boutique on Beverly Boulevard, isn't exactly the Peach Pit, but still.
"I crashed my first car, a BMW, so I had to find a way to pay for the repairs without telling my dad," she says.
After graduating from high school, she became a professional stylist, first on her mom and Jenner's infomercials, later for singer-actress Brandy. She founded a closet-makeover company that straightened up clients such as Cindy Crawford and Kathie Lee Gifford. Now, along with her sisters and mother, Kardashian owns and operates two boutiques in Calabasas, Calif.
Blame the Armenians.
"Armenian families are superstrict," she says. "My greatgrandparents were from Armenia. We didn't speak Armenian in the home, but just as a family and at our get-togethers. We eat Armenian food all the time.
Being Armenian is a big part of who I am - my dad was really conservative and my mom is really liberal, so I think I got a good mix of both."
...
Armenian Jewelry Line[edit | edit source]
On April 24, 2010, she launched a new jewelry line, inspired by Armenian designs. The jewelry can be found online at http://www.vsadesigns.com
Kim on the Armenian Genocide[edit | edit source]
Hi dolls! I wanted to bring something to your attention that I think is a really important issue.
As some of you may be aware, although many of you may not be, Turkey still denies that the Armenian Genocide took place, and the U.S. government has remained silent about it due to pressure from the Turkish government.
The Armenian Genocide was a series of terrible massacres committed by Turkey between 1915 and 1923 that killed members of my extended family and over two million other Armenians and Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
It’s time for America to speak openly and honestly about this horrible crime against humanity, and the only way this will happen is if WE speak up first.
To get your voice heard, call Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, at (202) 225-0100 and ask her to pass the Armenian Genocide Resolution, H.Res.252. This human rights legislation will help make sure that the lessons of this genocide are used to help prevent future crimes against humanity. For more information about calling the Speaker’s office, and ideas on exactly what to say click here. We CAN make a difference.
Source: Celebuzz
Armenian Husband[edit | edit source]
Sorry, Alecko Eskandarian! Kim Kardashian just wants to date a 'normal Armenian boy'
BY CRISTINA EVERETT DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Monday, August 30, 2010
Despite her history of dating handsome football players, Kim Kardashian says she just wants to find a "normal" guy."I'm dating," Kardashian, 29, told E! News host Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet at the Emmy Awards, but remained coy as to who her lucky suitors are.However the reality star, who ended her three-year relationship with New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush in March, has recently been linked to Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Miles Austin."The person I wanted to bring has a job and is a little busy," admitted Kardashian, who brought mom Kris Jenner as a back-up date to the star-studded event Sunday night. According to E! Online, Austin would have presumably been Kardashian's Emmy date, however he had a game in Houston the night before and another later this week in Miami. Kardashian admits it is difficult to meet a new guy because she isn't a fan of blind dates. This however, hasn't stopped her mother from playing matchmaker. "She's trying to come up with all these names in Hollywood and I'm like 'Just get me out of here. I want a normal Armenian boy,' " Kardashian said. On Sunday night's episode of "Keeping up with the Kardashians," Jenner worked overtime to set her daughter up with someone who suits both of their requirements: Alecko Eskandarian, an Armenian soccer player who plays for the L.A. Galaxy."I absolutely love [Armenian men]," Kardashian said. "[But] I don't know if this one worked out that well. "Though their date didn't go as Jenner had hoped, there appears to be no hard feelings between Kardashian and Eskandarian. Following the episode, the soccer star tweeted, "Thank you @KimKardashian for being a fun date and a down to earth person. I had a great time and have nothing but good things to say about u."
Source: NY Daily
On April month Turkish Cosmo cover[edit | edit source]
I just found out today that I am on the cover of Cosmopolitan Magazine in Turkey this month. Cosmopolitan Magazine has a number of international editions all around the world that run in various territories, and when I did this shoot for the international covers I had no idea that Turkey was planning to run my story on their cover THIS month, considering Genocide Remembrance Day is this month. My Armenian heritage means a lot to me and I’ve been brought up to be incredibly proud of my family’s background and culture so as an Armenian-American woman it is a huge honor for me to be on the first ever Armenian Cosmopolitan cover (pic above.)
I have an amazing relationship with Cosmopolitan Magazine. World-over, Cosmo is known as a fun and inspiring magazine for women of all races, shapes, sizes, regardless of their political beliefs and I really hope that if I can bring awareness to the issue, then this in an accomplishment.
Source: Kim's blog