Article

Street names

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Street names

Scope and Historical Definition

The study of street names in colonial Malaya constitutes a distinctive branch of toponymic documentation, driven primarily by the administrative and commercial needs of the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States governments. The earliest systematic treatment in the Society’s literature is H. T. Haughton’s “Native names of streets in Singapore” (1891), which paired each English street name in the island’s urban core with its Chinese (specifically Hokkien) and Tamil equivalents, providing romanized renderings and English glosses [1]. The work functioned as a practical key for English-speaking officials navigating a city whose physical landscape was understood and navigated through multiple linguistic and cultural lenses simultaneously [1]. Haughton’s article was compiled through direct consultation with community members—J. O. Anthonisz supplied the Tamil names, while Li A Sik and Tan Tiang Siong prepared the Chinese entries—rather than through archival research [1].

The project was substantially expanded by H. W. Firmstone’s “Chinese Names of Streets and Places in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula” (1905), a comprehensive bilingual gazetteer compiled from fieldwork across the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States [2]. Firmstone’s work provided Hokkien and Cantonese equivalents for streets, towns, and districts, serving as a practical reference for colonial administrators, interpreters, and European residents navigating the Chinese-language toponymic landscape of early twentieth-century Malaya [2]. The article is explicitly a continuation of earlier work, and it defers to Mr. Lo Man Yuk’s prior notes on Penang and Province Wellesley, situating it within a small body of collaborative colonial-era reference literature on Chinese-Malay linguistic contact [2].

Linguistic Structure and Dialectal Variation

A defining feature of Malayan street toponymy is the coexistence of multiple Chinese names for a single thoroughfare, reflecting the dialectal diversity of the Chinese community. Haughton’s 1891 survey recorded that Boat Quay carried at least five distinct Chinese names simultaneously—Tiam Pang Lo Thau, Chap Sa Hang, Chap Poet Keng, Chwi Chu Boi, and Khoi Ki—illustrating the fluidity and locality of vernacular toponymy [1, p. 52]. Firmstone’s 1905 list confirms this pattern on a larger scale: Havelock Road carries four distinct Hokkien names, and Fraser Street appears in two alternative forms (Sio-po sin-koi and Kam-pong san-kai) [2, pp. 88–90].

The distinction between Hokkien and Cantonese renderings is systematic throughout Firmstone’s work. In Negri Sembilan, Seremban is known by two Chinese names: Sai-lam-ban (Hokkien) and Fu-yong (Cantonese, 芙蓉), the latter also applied to the broader region of Sungei Ujong [2, pp. 168]. In Perak, Ipoh is called Pa-lo by Kheh and Cantonese Chinese, distinct from the Hokkien and European form Ipoh; Firmstone notes that two original kampong (village) settlements existed—one called Ipoh (from the Malay for upas-tree) and the other Paloh (a hollow filled with stagnant water)—and that the Cantonese and Kheh name prevailed for the town subsequently built [2, p. 183].

The international place-names section of Firmstone’s gazetteer reveals further dialectal and semantic distinctions. Chinese speakers distinguished San Francisco (Ku-kim-suan, “Old gold diggings”) from Australia (Sin-kim-sua, “New gold fields”), and Manila (Sio-lu-song, “Small Luzon”) from Spain (Toa-lu-song, “Big Luzon”) [2, pp. 200]. The Tiechiu (Teochew) dialect is also represented: for example, the Tiechiu term for India, Kit-ling-a tso ke, literally means “Klings’ home,” a colloquialism that reveals the community’s own geographic framing [2, p. 199].

Economic and Institutional Geography

The explanatory glosses accompanying the street names encode a wealth of information about the economic, social, and institutional geography of colonial Singapore. Haughton’s survey identifies streets by the trades concentrated there—iron-smiths, cabinetmakers, potters, dhobies (washermen), milk shops—by the institutions that anchored them (the Supreme Court, the old jail, the ice factory, the gasometer), by the kongsi (partnership or secret society) meeting-houses that occupied them, and by the topographical features that defined them (wells, streams, the old canal, the suspension bridge) [1]. The recurring distinction between Sio Po (Small Singapore, i.e. Kampong Glam) and Twa Po (Big Singapore, across the river) reveals how the Chinese community itself partitioned the island’s urban space into meaningful zones [1].

The etymological logic behind otherwise opaque commercial and institutional terms is made explicit in several entries. The Chinese term Tho Kho for godown literally translates as “earth treasury,” while Kha Ku for the old jail means “ankle chains” [1, pp. 51–52]. The “iron market” (Thi Pa Sat) referred specifically to Clyde Terrace Market, a major retail hub heavily patronized by Bugis traders; its Tamil name was Irumpu Pasar [1, pp. 53]. The Rumah Panjang (Lo Ma Pan Jiang) was the old atap (palm-leaf) building in Rochor Road where the demi-monde resided before Fraser Street was built, linking the street’s name to a specific social institution [1, p. 54].

The article also captures a city in transition. References to the “old market” versus the “new market,” the “old jail” versus its replacement, and the suppressed Thien Thi Hoi (Heavenly Righteous and Harmonious Fellowship) branches all mark the rapid modernization and administrative reorganization of Singapore during the 1880s and 1890s [1]. The Thien Thi Hoi maintained its chief meeting house in Lavender Street and its Kheh branch in Nankin Street; both are explicitly noted as “suppressed along with the other dangerous societies” [1, pp. 57–58]. The native names thus serve as a kind of palimpsest, preserving memory of a landscape that was being actively remade [1].

Firmstone’s 1905 work extends this institutional mapping to public buildings. The Supreme Court is rendered as Toa kok (Hokkien) and Tai kot (Cantonese); the Magistracy as Po-le and Po-lei-sz; the Singapore Railway Station as Hue-chhia thau and Fo-chhe thau [2, p. 148]. In the country districts, the names often encode economic or topographical information: Kai-cheung means “town” or more literally “street-area,” and Sungei Besi acquired this name because the locality of the town was changed some years earlier [2, p. 194]. Sepang is named Chi-wo kong, where Chi wo is the chop (seal) of a gambier and pepper kongsi, the largest in that district [2, p. 193].

The Problem of Naming and Administrative Response

Firmstone’s concluding remarks address a persistent administrative difficulty: the absence of fixed Chinese names for many streets, particularly in newer districts. He reports that Tanjong Pagar and Kampong Kapor districts were full of new roads and streets, nameless at present to the Chinese and defying identification [2, p. 205]. The Chinese, he observes, have “a happy-go-lucky way of using one expression to describe any one of perhaps a dozen streets”: any resident at the town-end of Bukit Timah Road, in Albert Street, Selegie Road, near Kandang Kerbau Police Station, Short Street, or in any of the numerous lanes in that neighbourhood would, if asked where he lives, reply “Tek Kah” (i.e. Foot of the bamboos), and unless cross-examined would not volunteer any further information [2, p. 205].

Firmstone argues that it is important that official interpreters should have a thorough knowledge of the names, English and Chinese, for all the streets in the town, “a matter in which, in my experience, many Government interpreters are lamentably ignorant” [2, p. 205]. He calls for the Municipality to step in and take the matter in hand, suggesting that street-names should not be “multiplied unsystematically in Chinese as well as in English” [2, p. 206]. He states that infallibility cannot be claimed for his list, as various informants have given contradictory information, but hopes the work may prove useful to any European with a knowledge of Chinese and to any Chinese person with a knowledge of English [2, p. 206].

The work was signed at Penang in March 1904, indicating a compilation period of at least several months drawing on informants across at least six administrative jurisdictions [2, p. 207]. Firmstone acknowledges contributions from Mr. Langham-Carter of the Land Office (country roads and districts), Mr. E. A. Gardiner of the Straits Police (Malacca street names, with notes by Mr. Go Lai Kui, the Government Interpreter there), Mr. A. M. Pountney (Selangor), Mr. W. Cowan (Perak, with notes by Mr. W. D. Barnes), the District Officers at Raub and Kuala Lipis (Pahang), and Mr. Ridges (Negri Sembilan) [2, p. 207]. He was unable to obtain Chinese names for up-country kampong settlements in Malacca, where there were none apparently and the Chinese population was comparatively thin [2, p. 207].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on street names in Malaya spans a period of roughly fifteen years, from Haughton’s 1891 survey to the supplementary materials published in 1906. The trajectory moves from a single-city practical key (Haughton, Singapore only) to a multi-state bilingual gazetteer (Firmstone, covering Singapore, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Pahang, Perak, and Selangor, plus an international section) [1], [2]. The methodological approach remains consistently field-based and informant-driven rather than archival: Haughton consulted community members directly, and Firmstone’s network of contributors spans the Straits Police, the Land Office, the FMS Civil Service, and the Chinese Protectorate in both Singapore and Penang [1], [2, p. 207].

A brief note by M. A. Knight (1906) provides annotations and corrections to Firmstone’s list, identifying Tan Seng Po (Armenian Street) as a brother-in-law of Mr. Seah Liang Leah, recalling the bamboo groves that gave Selegie Road its Chinese name Tek-kha (foot of the bamboos), and noting that the section of Orchard Road between Tank Road and Grange Road was formerly known as Tanglin Kechil (Little Tanglin) [3, p. 287]. For Malacca, Knight explains that the Chinese name for the Riverside, “foot of the Dutch trees,” referred to avenues of angsana trees lining Fort Road, the ascent to the Stadt House, and the road to Tanjong Kling, which had all decayed some twenty-five years prior [3, p. 288].

An index in romanized Hokkien and Cantonese, compiled by Tan Kee Soon and revised by A. W. Bailey and F. M. Baddeley, was published in 1906 to facilitate reference to Firmstone’s list [4]. This indexing work underscores the practical, reference-oriented character of the entire body of literature: the primary audience was not the scholarly community but the colonial administrative apparatus, for which accurate toponymic knowledge was a matter of operational necessity. The 1973 commemorative reprint of the 150th anniversary of the founding of Singapore [5] indicates that these early toponymic records retained archival value well into the post-independence period, though the specific content of that reprint is not detailed in the available records.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. Haughton H.T (1891). Native names of streets in Singapore JSBRAS 23: 49–65.
  2. H.W. Firmstone (1905). Chinese names of streets and places in Singapore and the Malay Peninsula JSBRAS 42: 53–208. Read on JSTOR
  3. A. Knight (1906). Chinese names of streets JSBRAS 45: 287–288.
  4. F.M. Baddeley et al. (1906). An index in Romanised Hokkien and Cantonese, comp. Tan Kee Soon, and rev. A.W. Bailey and F.M. Baddeley, to “The Chinese names of streets and places in Singapore”, pub. H.W. Firmstone in Journal No. 42 JSBRAS 46: 195–213. Read on JSTOR
  5. Anon (1973). 150th Anniversary of the Founding of Singapore Commemorative Reprint : 317.