The Trini Family Test — How Many of These 20 Did Your Parents Do?

The Saturday morning someone went out for doubles. The bottle of bitters in the cupboard. The old woman who told you to put rice at the door and never explained why. Your parents did these things so naturally you never asked where they came from. This video counts down 20 Trinidadian family customs and shows a real, documented origin for every one: sou-sou (West African), bush tea (a survey of 450 households and 917 plant remedies), the soucouyant, Angostura bitters (created in Venezuela in 1824, moved to Port of Spain in 1875), black cake, sorrel, callaloo, pelau, roti, doubles (invented by Emamool and Raheeman Rasulan Deen in Princes Town in 1936), pastelles, parang, the Santa Rosa Festival, Phagwa, Divali, Hosay (including the October 30, 1884 massacre), Spiritual Baptist worship (banned from 1917 to 1951), Canboulay and Carnival, and the steelpan. Number one is the one most families have never traced: Indian Arrival Day and the ship Fatel Razack, which landed on May 30, 1845 with 225 immigrants. There's a scoring guide at the end, so keep count. As always: a custom is a clue, not a verdict. Hosay is attended by people of every faith, pelau blends two ancestries by design, and sorrel and callaloo are eaten across communities that share no bloodline. These practices show which histories your family lived alongside, not which ancestors you have. 🔎 Want to see what a real search turns up for your own surname? The link to our free surname lookup tool is pinned in the comments below. 🧬 For the full picture, our family research service goes directly into the surviving registers, the ship records, and the documented family lines tied to your specific surname — link also pinned in the comments. Drop your score below, tell us which number surprised you most, and which custom your family did that didn't make the list. Sources: - Wikipedia, "Doubles (food)," "Pelau," "Pastelle," "Callaloo," "Angostura bitters," "Hosay," "Canboulay," "Steelpan," "Parang," "Soucouyant," "Fatel Razack," "Spiritual Baptist/Shouter Liberation Day," "Buss-up-shut" - "An ethnobotanical survey of medicinal plants in Trinidad," Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (2015) - National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago, "Divali Nagar" and "5 Things to Know About Phagwa" - National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago, "Indian Indentureship Records – General Registers" Subscribe — every week on this channel we trace another documented piece of Caribbean history back to the exact families still carrying it forward today. #Trinidad #Genealogy #FamilyHistory #TrinidadCulture #Doubles #Parang #Steelpan #CaribbeanHistory #Ancestry #TrinidadHistory