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Many
ethnic Chinese The Chinese people or simply Chinese, are people or ethnic groups identified with China, usually through ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, or other affiliation. Chinese people are known as Zhongguoren () or as Huaren () by speakers of s ...
people have lived in
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...
for many centuries. Over time, especially under social and political pressure during the New Order era, most
Chinese Indonesians Chinese Indonesians ( id, Orang Tionghoa Indonesia) and colloquially Chindo or just Tionghoa are Indonesians whose ancestors arrived from China at some stage in the last eight centuries. Chinese people and their Indonesian descendants have ...
have adopted names that better match the local language.


History of Chinese Indonesian surnames


Colonial era until 1965

During the Dutch colonial era, the Dutch administration recorded Chinese names in
birth certificate A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a person. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation of the ensui ...
s and other
legal document Legal instrument is a legal term of art that is used for any formally executed written document that can be formally attributed to its author, records and formally expresses a legally enforceable act, process, or contractual duty, obligation, or ...
s using an adopted spelling convention that was based primarily on the
Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...
(Southern
Min Min or MIN may refer to: Places * Fujian, also called Mǐn, a province of China ** Min Kingdom (909–945), a state in Fujian * Min County, a county of Dingxi, Gansu province, China * Min River (Fujian) * Min River (Sichuan) * Mineola (Amtr ...
), the language of the majority of Chinese immigrants in the Dutch East Indies. The administrators used the closest Dutch pronunciation and spelling of Hokkien words to record the names. A similar thing happened in Malaya, where the British administrators record the names using English spelling. (For instance, compare Lim (English) vs. Liem (Dutch), Wee or Ooi (English) vs. Oei or Oey (Dutch), Goh (English) vs. Go (Dutch), Chan (English) vs. Tjan (Dutch), Lee (English) vs. Lie (Dutch), Leong (English) vs Liong (Dutch).) Hence, Lin (林, Mandarin) is spelled Liem in Indonesia. Chen (陳) is Tan, Huang (黃) is Oei or Oey, Wu (吳) is Go, Wei (魏) is Goei or Ngoei, Guo (郭) is Kwee, Yang (楊) is Njoo, and so on. Further, as Hokkien romanization standard did not exist then, some romanized names varied slightly. For example, 郭 (Guo) could sometimes be Kwik, Que or Kwek instead of Kwee and Huang is often Oei instead of Oey. The spelling convention survived through the Japanese occupation (1942–1945) well into
Indonesian independence The Proclamation of Indonesian Independence ( id, Proklamasi Kemerdekaan Indonesia, or simply ''Proklamasi'') was read at 10:00 on Friday, 17 August 1945 in Jakarta. The declaration marked the start of the diplomatic and armed resistance of th ...
(1945) and sovereignty acknowledgment by the
Dutch government The politics of the Netherlands take place within the framework of a parliamentary representative democracy, a constitutional monarchy, and a decentralised unitary state.''Civil service systems in Western Europe'' edited by A. J. G. M. Bekk ...
(1949). Since the independent Indonesian government inherited the Dutch legal system, it also survived until 1965 in the Sukarno era. The Indonesian government later began changing Indonesian spelling to harmonize it with the spelling used for Malay in
Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...
,
Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
and
Brunei Brunei ( , ), formally Brunei Darussalam ( ms, Negara Brunei Darussalam, Jawi: , ), is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its South China Sea coast, it is completely surrounded by th ...
, first under the '' Ejaan Suwandi'' introduced in 1947, and again under the ''
Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan The Enhanced Spelling of the Indonesian Language ( id, Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia yang Disempurnakan, EYD) is the spelling system used for the Indonesian language. History The Enhanced Spelling of the Indonesian Language ( id, Ejaan Bahasa Indone ...
'', literally "Perfected Spelling", adopted in 1972. Under the Suwandi system of spelling, "oe", influenced by Dutch, became "u", influenced by English; for example, Loe was spelled as Lu. Since 1972, Dutch-style "j" became "y", meaning Njoo is now spelled Nyoo.


1966–1998

After
Suharto Suharto (; ; 8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was an Indonesian army officer and politician, who served as the second and the longest serving president of Indonesia. Widely regarded as a military dictator by international observers, Suharto l ...
came to power, his regime created many anti-Chinese legislations in Indonesia. One of them was
127/U/Kep/12/1966 Indonesian law affecting Chinese-Indonesians were conducted through a series of laws, directives, or constitutions enacted by the Government of Indonesia that affected the lives of Chinese Indonesians or Chinese nationals living in Indonesia ...
which strongly encouraged ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia to adopt Indonesian-sounding names instead of the standard three-word or two-word Chinese names. Many Indonesianized names are Hokkien surname syllables with western or Indonesian prefix or suffix – resulting in many exotic-sounding names. Although two Chinese individuals shared the same Chinese surname, they may employ different strategies for the Indonesian-sounding names. For example, one with the surname 林 (Lin) may adopt "Limanto", and the other may adopt "Halim" as Indonesian-sounding names. "Limanto" and "Halim" both contain "lim" that corresponds to the 林 surname (Mandarin: Lin, Cantonese: Lam or Lum, Hokkien: Liem or Lim = forest). The famous 1966 political activist and businessman
Sofjan Wanandi Sofjan Wanandi, a.k.a. Lim Bian Khoen (; born March 3, 1941) is an Indonesian businessman and the majority owner of Santini Group. Born in Sawahlunto, West Sumatra,(id)Sofjan Wanandi. Pusat Data dan Analisis Tempo. he is the brother of Jusuf Wana ...
(Chinese romanization: Liem Bian Koen) translated Lin to old Javanese "wana", meaning forest, and added the male-suffix "ndi", resulting in the new clan name Wanandi. Despite the Indonesianization, the Hokkien surnames are still used today by the Chinese-Indonesian diaspora overseas (mostly in the Netherlands, Germany, and USA); by those Chinese-Indonesians courageous enough during Suharto's regime to keep their Chinese names (e.g.,
Kwik Kian Gie Kwik Kian Gie (; born 11 January 1935) is an Indonesian economist and politician who served as the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs from 1999 to 2000, the Minister of National Development Planning from 2001 to 2004, as well as briefl ...
), or by those who couldn't afford to process the name change through Indonesia's civil bureaucracy.


2000–present

After Suharto resigned from the presidency, subsequent governments revoked the ban on the ethnic Chinese from speaking and learning Chinese in public. Using the original Chinese surnames is no longer a taboo but only a small minority have decided to re-adopt the original Hokkien names of their grandparents or to use the Mandarin Chinese
pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...
romanization, pronunciation and spelling, for example author Maria Audrey Lukito legally changed her name to YU Jia Hui.


Examples of Chinese surnames and their Indonesian-sounding adoptions


See also

*
Chinese Indonesians Chinese Indonesians ( id, Orang Tionghoa Indonesia) and colloquially Chindo or just Tionghoa are Indonesians whose ancestors arrived from China at some stage in the last eight centuries. Chinese people and their Indonesian descendants have ...
*
List of common Chinese surnames These are lists of the most common Chinese surnames in China (People's Republic of China), Taiwan (Republic of China), and the Chinese diaspora overseas as provided by authoritative government or academic sources. Chinese names also form the bas ...
* Legislation on Chinese Indonesians *
Sōshi-kaimei Sōshi-kaimei (創氏改名, ko, 일본식 성명 강요) was a policy of pressuring Koreans under Japanese rule to adopt Japanese names. It consisted of two parts. Ordinance No. 19, issued in 1939, required ''sōshi'', literally "creatio ...
for Japanese policy on Korean names during Japan's occupation of Korea * Filipino-Chinese surname, for a similar phenomenon of surname localisation


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Indonesian-Sounding Names Adopted By Chinese Indonesians Indonesian names * Chinese Indonesian culture id:Nama Tionghoa