Temer names
Rodney Needham’s 1964 note examines the naming conventions of the Temer (Temiar) people of Peninsular Malaysia, arguing that their combination of age-order proper names and death-related terms constitutes a system of comparative interest that warrants further field investigation. The article is situated within Needham’s broader programme of studying mourning-terms and their relationship to social solidarity in small-scale societies, with the Penan of middle Borneo serving as the principal comparative reference point.
Summary
Needham’s central concern is a theoretical possibility he had raised in 1959: that a society might unite a system of death-names (terms assumed at the deaths of close relatives) with a series of age-order proper names, forming a more integrated naming system than any previously documented. The Penan of middle Borneo already distinguish their children by order of birth when those children die, so the logical next step would be for a society to do the same while the children are alive. The Temer appear to approach this combination, though not in the precise form Needham had envisaged.
The article works through the available secondary sources—principally Williams-Hunt (1952) and Slimming (1958)—to establish what is known of Temer naming practice. Williams-Hunt recorded nine names for boys and seven for girls from the Sungei Plus area of Perak, though the two series overlap in four names (Ngah, Anjang, Udah, Alig), creating an inconsistency that Williams-Hunt himself flagged. Needham then demonstrates that at least four of the Temer names (Long, Alang, Ngah, and likely Pandah, Itam, Busu) are cognate with or identical to the Malay timang-timangan series recorded by Wilkinson, suggesting the age-order names were adopted from Malay rather than being aboriginal. The death-related terms reported by Slimming—Abaie (still-born), Amoid (died in infancy), Chelar (died before adolescence)—do not correlate with the proper-name series, but their coexistence with it, alongside the teknonym Litau (indicating a first-born male child), raises the possibility of a systematic relationship between birth-order and death-order naming that remains undocumented.
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 and what a government anthropologist or local resident would need to establish.
Key Findings
- 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 (p. 122).
- At least four Temer names (Long, Alang, Ngah, and probably Pandah, Itam, Busu) are cognate with the Malay timang-timangan series in Wilkinson’s dictionary, indicating Malay borrowing rather than indigenous origin (pp. 122–123).
- The Malay timang-timangan series itself is reported inconsistently across Wilkinson’s 1901 dictionary, his 1908 Incidents of Malay Life, and the 1948 Coope-revised edition, with overlapping and contradictory positional assignments (pp. 122–123).
- Slimming records three Temer death-related status 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 (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 (p. 124).
- Slimming’s observation that “in every [Temer] longhouse all the occupants are inter-related either by kinship or marriage” (1958, p. 58) aligns the Temer with the segmentary society type to which Needham associates the presence of mourning-terms (p. 125).
Conclusion
Needham’s definitive takeaway is twofold. First, the Temer naming system, even in its fragmentary and contradictory state as reported in the literature, is a topic of genuine comparative interest that deserves systematic field investigation to determine whether a real structural parallel exists with the Penan system of teknonyms and death-names. Second, and of broader theoretical significance, the Temer fit the profile of a segmentary society of small, isolated, mutually dependent groups in which the death of an individual is peculiarly disruptive of social order; the emphasis the Temer place on both birth and death in their naming practice is therefore consistent with the general principle that mourning-terms correlate with a particular quality of social solidarity.
Context
- The article draws exclusively on published secondary sources (Williams-Hunt 1952; Slimming 1958; Wilkinson 1901/1908/1948; Stevens 1902) and the author’s own prior work (Needham 1959); no primary fieldwork is reported, and Needham explicitly frames the piece as a call for further investigation by a government anthropologist or local resident.
- Historiographically, the note contributes to the comparative study of naming systems in small-scale societies of Southeast Asia, extending Needham’s 1959 typology of mourning-terms to a Peninsular Malay context and testing its boundaries against a society with documented Malay cultural influence.