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Personal names

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Personal names

Personal names in the Malay world encompass a range of systems—conventional birth-order names, Chinese surname and given-name structures, aboriginal naming practices, and the historical use of titles in diplomatic and literary records—that together reflect the region’s complex linguistic, cosmological, and social organisation. From the antonymic pairing of Malay timang-timangan (conventional sibling names) to the structured surname-and-given-name conventions of the Chinese communities of Malaya, and from the death-related status terms of the Temer of Perak to the Javanese royal titles recorded in Chinese dynastic histories, the evidence assembled in the Society’s journals reveals a field of considerable depth and internal diversity. These naming systems are not merely classificatory devices; they encode cosmological principles, kinship obligations, and historical memory, and their documentation has been a recurring concern of scholars working across the Straits Settlements, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo from the early twentieth century onward.

The Malay Conventional Sib-Name System

The most extensively documented system of personal naming in the Malay Peninsula is the timang-timangan, the set of conventional names assigned to children according to their order of birth. Geoffrey Hodgson’s 1967 study, written as a tribute to Sir Richard Winstedt, provides the most systematic comparative treatment of this system to date, drawing on fourteen Peninsula listings and his own fieldwork in Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Penang, and among aboriginal groups [1]. The core of the system consists of ten names that form five antonymic or complementary pairs: hitam (black)–puteh (white), panjang (long)–pandak (short), sulong (senior)–bongsu (junior), ‘ngah (middle)–alang (middling), and kechil (immature)–muda (young) [1, pp. 110–111]. Hodgson argues that this “balancing” is precisely what the root timang—meaning “to balance, to weigh up”—denotes, and he notes that Wilkinson’s failure to include conventional names under that entry in his dictionary was an oversight [1, p. 110].

A critical finding of Hodgson’s work is that the system is not a single fixed sequence but a set of balancing pairs selected and reordered by locality. An aged Perak informant, Pa’ Sulong of Kampong Bota Kiri, attributed the variation to different lurah (districts) maintaining different systems, a claim Hodgson considered credible rather than mere rationalisation [1]. The more collections are gathered, the greater the permutations, and the lexicographical record—spanning Wilkinson, Winstedt, Maxwell, and later dictionaries—presents contradictory or incomplete sequences that reflect this local diversity rather than a single canonical order [1].

Hodgson situates the antonymic pairing within the broader Indonesian principle of dualistic-monism as theorised by van Dijk, citing Duyvendak’s Ambonese clan distributions, Lubis’s Batak and Minangkabau analyses, and Javanese Kiri–Kanan (left–right) divisions as parallel expressions of the same cosmological principle [1]. This theoretical framing was, according to Hodgson, previously unmade in the Malay studies literature [1].

The system’s contemporary vitality varies by state. It is attested in Johore, Negeri Sembilan, Perak, Penang, and Kedah, with Perak being the state where it is most frequently used in modern times; identity cards first issued in 1948 for those above age twelve, and older Perak residents still carry conventional names on their cards [1, pp. 118–119]. Zainal Abidin’s Singapore data, however, show a dramatic decline in Malay-origin personal names: 13.3 per cent (40 of 301) in 1872–83 versus 0.7 per cent (5 of 535) in 1951–55, with conventional names appearing in only five and one cases respectively [1, p. 118].

Aboriginal and Comparative Naming Systems

The timang-timangan system is not confined to ethnic Malays. Hodgson’s comparative survey extends to Island-Asia more broadly, tabulating systems among the Ibaloi, Balinese, Javanese, Batak, Murut, Kadazan, Iban, Bedayuh, Sundanese, and Deli Malay [1]. He identifies five typological categories: ordinal, fixed repeated series, dualistic-monistic pairs, combinations, and the widespread pattern of naming only the eldest and youngest with a generalised term for intermediates [1]. The East Javanese system achieves balance through the Pendawa Lima (Five Heroes of the Mahabharata) for five siblings, inserting ordinals (Ketiga, Keempat) for even numbers to approximate balance [1, p. 116]. The Balinese fixed series is caste-dependent for the first-born’s name, cycling through five names (Wayang/Putu/Gede, Made/Nengah, Nyoman, Ktut, then repeating) [1, p. 114].

Among the Peninsula aborigines, the Temer and Senoi use the Malay timang-timangan system with local variation, while the largely Islamised Jakun use only some of the names [1]. Rodney Needham’s 1964 note on Temer names provides a more detailed account of this borrowing. The Temer masculine age-order series comprises nine names (Long, Alang, Ngah, Pandah, Itam, Anjang, Udah, Busu, Alig); the feminine series comprises seven (Andah, Teh, Uda, Ngah, Anjang, Alig, Itam), with four names shared between both series [2, p. 122]. Needham demonstrates that at least four of the Temer names (Long, Alang, Ngah, and probably Pandah, Itam, Busu) are cognate with or identical to the Malay timang-timangan series recorded by Wilkinson, indicating Malay borrowing rather than indigenous origin [2, pp. 122–123].

Needham’s broader interest lies in the coexistence of these age-order names with death-related status terms. Slimming records three such terms applied to women—Abaie (still-born), Amoid (died in infancy), Chelar (died before adolescence)—plus Manang for a woman who has never borne a child [2, p. 123]. The teknonym Litau, assumed by a man to indicate his first-born is male, places emphasis on both birth order and sex, and Slimming notes that individuals may change their name two or three times over several years [2, p. 124]. Needham is careful to note that the evidence is fragmentary and contradictory, and that his 1959 letter to Slimming requesting clarification went unanswered; the article is thus less a definitive account than a structured research agenda identifying precisely what gaps exist [2].

Chinese Naming Conventions in Malaya

The Chinese communities of Malaya maintain a distinct naming structure based on the combination of a surname (family name) and a personal name (given name), a system that R. Jones examined in a substantial 1959 study published in the Society’s journal [3]. Jones’s work addresses the use of surnames and personal names by the Chinese in Malaya, documenting the conventions governing their formation, the generational naming cycles that link siblings and cousins, and the practical implications of these conventions for administrative and legal purposes in the colonial and post-colonial state [3]. The study occupies a significant place in the documentation of Chinese-Malayan social life, providing a reference point for understanding how Chinese naming practices interacted with, and were sometimes in tension with, the Malay and aboriginal systems described above.

Historical and Diplomatic Naming

The use of personal names in historical and diplomatic records presents a distinct set of interpretive challenges. C. O. Blagden’s 1910 note corrects a suggestion made by W. George Maxwell regarding the identity of the Javanese ruler “Haji Ka-ta-na-ka-la” as recorded in the History of the Yuan Dynasty [4]. Blagden argues that Maxwell’s identification of the name as Haji Kadir Nakhoda (a ship’s captain who had performed the pilgrimage) is incorrect. Citing Groeneveldt’s translation of the relevant passage, he demonstrates that “Haji Ka-ta-na-ka-la” was a ruling prince of Java who had been killed by the prince of Kalang, and that the term “Haji” here represents the old Javanese word haji meaning “king,” not the Malay-Arabic term for a pilgrim [4, p. 156]. Blagden identifies the figure as Kertanagara, the last ruling prince of Tumapel, who was dethroned by Jaya Katong of Daha and whose son-in-law Raden Wijaya went on to found Majapahit; he notes that the Chinese and Javanese accounts are corroborated by contemporary inscriptions [4, p. 157]. This case illustrates how the same phonetic string in a foreign-language source can be misread as a personal name with a religious connotation when it in fact encodes a royal title, and it underscores the importance of contextual and linguistic analysis in the interpretation of historical personal names.

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on personal names reveals a trajectory from early philological corrections to systematic comparative anthropology. Blagden’s 1910 note, though brief, exemplifies the early Straits Branch period’s concern with the accurate identification of names in historical sources, a task that required command of multiple languages and familiarity with both Chinese and Javanese historiographical traditions [4]. The mid-century work of Jones (1959) on Chinese naming conventions and Needham (1964) on Temer names represents a shift toward the documentation of living naming systems in their social context, with explicit attention to the practical implications for administration and to the theoretical frameworks of comparative anthropology [3], [2]. Hodgson’s 1967 study marks the most ambitious synthesis, combining fieldwork, lexicographical criticism, and cosmological theory to produce the first systematic comparative typology of conventional sib-naming across Island-Asia [1].

Several recurring themes emerge from this body of work. First, the lexicographical record is unreliable: Wilkinson’s dictionary presents contradictory positional assignments for the timang-timangan series across its 1901, 1908, and 1948 editions, and the same inconsistency is noted in the Temer data [2, pp. 122–123]. Second, the relationship between Malay and aboriginal naming systems is one of borrowing and adaptation rather than independent invention, as demonstrated by the cognate relationship between Temer and Malay names [2, pp. 122–123]. Third, the decline of conventional names in urban and administratively integrated contexts—documented by Zainal Abidin’s Singapore data and by the observation that older Perak residents still carry such names on their identity cards while younger generations do not—raises questions about the future of these systems [1, pp. 118–119]. Needham’s explicit call for further fieldwork by a government anthropologist or local resident remains, in the absence of subsequent documentation in the Society’s records, an open research agenda [2].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. G. Hodgson (1967). Malay conventional sib-names JMBRAS 40(2): 106–121. Read on JSTOR
  2. R. Needham (1964). Temer names JMBRAS 37(1): 121–125. Read on JSTOR
  3. R. Jones (1959). Chinese names: notes on the use of surnames and personal names by the Chinese in Malaya JMBRAS 32(3): 1–84.
  4. C.O. Blagden (1910). Haji Ka-Ta-Na-Ka-La JSBRAS 54: 156–157. Read on JSTOR