As Indonesia’s Chinese revive original family surnames, others get inspiration from Javanese customs, American culture and Islam

Name-giving in Indonesia has a colourful history for most of its 1,300 ethnic groups; for the Chinese, it was troubling when they had to abandon their names

Today, Western and Islamic influences play a part in naming babies, but even the pandemic and K-pop have provided inspiration

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The Ongkowijoyos decided to revive their Chinese surname for their children.
Photo: Handout

Published: 10:30am, 27 Feb 2022Updated: 1:05am, 5 Mar 2022

Indonesians have a saying that a name is akin to a prayer. So when parents give their child a name, it goes without saying that a certain wish for his or her future is inherent within. This belief has produced some distinctive name-giving traditions rooted in the country’s history and diverse cultures. Since there are some 1,300 ethnic groups in Indonesia, the results are as varied as they are unique.

For a minority ethnic group like the Indonesian Chinese, who make up less than two per cent of Indonesia’s population, its history of name-giving has been both colourful and contentious. Although Chinese people settled in the Indonesian archipelago as far back as the 16th century, the majority arrived as economic migrants in the early 20th century.

Most of these new arrivals remained either Chinese or dual citizens right up to 1955, when China signed a treaty with Indonesia to resolve the issue of dual nationality. The treaty forced Indonesian Chinese to choose between Indonesian and Chinese citizenships. Most selected the former.

But naturalisation did not stop Indonesian Chinese from experiencing the stigma of being seen as foreign. In 1967, in an attempt at “assimilation”, the Indonesian government issued a decree compelling all Indonesians of Chinese ancestry to abandon their Chinese names in favour of Indonesian ones. It was followed by a ban on the public use of Mandarin and expression of Chinese culture.

For Surabaya-born Hwely Ongkowijoyo, 44, the 1967 regulation led his grandparents to convert his family name, Wang or Ong in Hokkien, to Ongkowijoyo. The new Indonesian-ised family name remained in use for two generations until 2013, when Ongkowijoyo decided to revive the original family name by legally naming his newborn daughter Vivian Wang.

“For two generations, our family had used the name Ongkowijoyo and we felt that change was needed to move with the times. Ongkowijoyo sounded like [it was] from another era,” Linda Trisnawati, 45, Ongkowijoyo’s wife, said.