What’s in a name?

August 4th, 2007 Posted in Uncategorized

A little news item caught my attention recently.

China with more than a billion people are now sharing just 100 surnames.Chinese law states children are allowed to take the surname from either their mother or father.

This lack of variety means 93 million people share the name Wang, 92 million Lis and 88million Zhangs , Chen, Zhou and Lin have 20 million members each.

Under a new draft regulation released by the Ministry of Public Security, parents will be able to combine their surnames for their children, a move that could open up 1.28 million possibilities.

For example, a father named Zhou and mother named Zhu could choose to call their child either Zhou, Zhu, Zhouzhu or Zhuzhou.

Members from the ethnic minority groups are encouraged to use traditional surnames. Many have adopted those of the Hans,which harms their cultural heritage.

In Korea, where more than half the people are either Kim, Lee, Park or Choi, and where two thirds of the population share 10 surnames, having a rare surname such as Bing and Who can be very inconvenient at the least and downright hassle when no one believes that is your real name.

The Koreans pay a lot of attention to surnames, marriage between Kim and Kim is prohibited unless they can prove they are from different branches of Kims.

With the exception of the Chinese and the Eurasians, generally speaking, other Malaysians namely the Bumiputras and the Indians do not have surnames. Over time family history or ancestral heritage because of the mixing of genes can disappear into the black hole of no return.

In this country anyone with a Muslim name is a Malay. Are these names Muslim or Arabic? Christian Arabs also use such names as Fuad, Bashir, Samir, Amin and even Osama! .

Bumiputras need to question themselves, and it’s the same with the Filipinos who use Spanish names, who they really are.

It appears that we have been trapped in this bird cage to the point we can’t be true to our own ethnic identity, and we need external help to define who we are.

Names should reflect our identity. Shakespeare’s Juliet asked what’s in a name? To me it’s everything in the context of who you are and your cultural heritage.

Kamal Mustapha of Turkey created surnames for the Turks, he is known as Kamal Attaturk (The Father of the Turks).The Congolese now Zaire have adopted surnames for easier identification and national pride. The Arabs too have surnames like Al-Sabah,Albar and so on.

In this part of the world, it is easier to identify Javanese sounding names. Can we identify, for example, a Malay Malaysian from his name if we read the newspapers? While we are in the country, we can make the assumption, then, some non-Malay Muslims too have similar names. There is little to show in terms of the person’s cultural or racial identity.

The beauty of having surnames is that it records a historical continuity and a bond with the bigger world. A Malaysian Ong can relate to other Ongs even if they are of different nationalities. There is a mental hook up or even a spiritual one because of common surnames.

If we don’t have surnames, and say we live in a different country, can we tell who our own relatives are in our country of origin especially if you haven’t seen them for years, and your parents have passed on to tell you who is who? We can even fall in love and marry our own blood relatives which is not on, genetically speaking.

How do the Bataks of Sumatra bond even though they are Christian and Muslim among them? It’s their clan names or their marga names like Nasution, Lubis, Sihaan, Siregar ,Tobeng etc besides language that gel them. By looking at their clan names,they know who they are, and there is a sense of belonging and brotherhood immediately.

For the Malaysian Bumiputras to have a sense of true identity,clan names should be drawn up by members of the family,thus,guaranteeing ethnic identity in perpetuity.

The current Bumiputra practice of having names like Joe Thomas or Ali Amir can be very misleading, by having a surname, or a clan name in addition to these personal names common identification and ethnic bond can be further established.

The Malaysian Bumiputra ethnic identity needs a new work over to ensure that it lives for another thousand years!