TheJakartaPost

Please Update your browser

Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.

Jakarta Post

By the way ... What'€™s in a name?

Names have intrigued me since I got to know a tall, robust girl with curly hair named Tang Ninik during my high school days

The Jakarta Post
Sun, September 21, 2014

Share This Article

Change Size

By the way ...   What'€™s in a name?

N

ames have intrigued me since I got to know a tall, robust girl with curly hair named Tang Ninik during my high school days.

The Tang surname indicated she was of Chinese descent. The name Ninik was quite a common name used to refer to a girl in Central Java. Loosely translated, it simply means '€œgirl'€.

Given that other Chinese-Indonesian girls I knew back then had well thought-out Chinese names '€” even when sounding like a ringtone, such as Ling-Ling (rising high) and Ting-Ting (graceful), Ninik was an exception. It was not Chinese and indicated a simplistic, minimal effort to name a daughter.

When I told her so, she angrily told me to ask her father why he gave her that name. He probably did not consider it important to give her a more thoughtful name since to the Chinese, a daughter is usually not as important as a son.

But her father may have chosen the name because for him, she was indeed his ninik. Perhaps he did not use the Chinese character niu (which also means girl) because, rather than hiding it, he wanted to show off his Peranakan (mixed) lineage, which purebred Chinese (totok) often frown upon.

Another Chinese girl I knew, Siau Ling, had an Indonesian name I found contradictory to her sex: Lingga. Apparently, she was unaware that her name suggested linga or phallus '€” a Tantric symbol of male generative power '€” pronounced lingga in Indonesian, as well as being a Batak family name.

Another contradictory sounding female name was Joni, commonly perceived to be a male name borrowed from the English name of Johnny. When I asked a girl why she had this name, she said the name given to her by her parents was '€œYoni'€, but friends kept calling her Joni. Her explanation cleared up the confusion because in Sanskrit, yoni means vagina.

While naming a child after one'€™s genitals may be unheard of, calling out to a very young girl using nduk or wuk or boy using tole or le is quite common among the Javanese.

Batak family names also intrigue me because they evoke associations with similar sounding Indonesian words.

For example, the family name Tambunan corresponds to tambun (fat), Manurung to murung (melancholic), Limbong to limbung (unsteady), Pohan to pohon (tree), Panjaitan to penjahitan (tailor'€™s place), Rajagukguk to raja (king) and gukguk (bark), Simarmata to si memar mata (a bruised eye) and Butar-Butar to putar-putar (spinning around).

Of course, such associations are just a joke and are not accurate or relevant, especially when they are made out of ignorance of a foreign language.

I was greatly amused when first exposed to the European family name Bodó, because in Javanese, bodo normally means stupid. A Russian sitting next to me in a car chuckled as we passed the Tarakan Hospital in West Jakarta because tarakan means cockroach in Russian. She almost burst into laughter when I told her that Tarakan was also the name of a city in East Kalimantan.

Other names that sparked my curiosity were based on certain events that parents had experienced or cherished. Elektronita Duan, a grass roots peace activist from Tobelo in North Maluku, told me she was named so by her father as electricity had reached her village in Tobelo on the day she was born.

One of my high school English teachers, a pretty woman named Donna Elvira, told me her mother was pregnant with her when she and her father watched Mozart'€™s Don Giovanni. So, when she was born, they decided to name her after the opera'€™s leading lady.

I was intrigued as to why they named their daughter after one of the playboy'€™s many past conquests. No parent would name their daughter after a woman who was abandoned by a playboy, would they? Perhaps they simply favored the foreignness of the name.

The name that truly intrigued me was Hidup, which means life. The moment I met someone with this name, I couldn'€™t stop wondering what I would say in the event he passed away. May Life rest in peace? This time, I refrained from asking how he had got his name.

 '€” Arif Suryobuwono

{

Your Opinion Matters

Share your experiences, suggestions, and any issues you've encountered on The Jakarta Post. We're here to listen.

Enter at least 30 characters
0 / 30

Thank You

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. We appreciate your feedback.