‘What Do I Call You?’ : Name Game Is Real Puzzler Around Asia

BANGKOK, Thailand —  A summit in Southeast Asia would bring together an Indonesian with only one name, a Malaysian with no family name and a woman known universally and simply by her nickname, Cory.

From the Filipino Popsys and Bongbongs, to Indonesia’s singular Suharto and South Korea’s multitudinous Kims, Lees and Parks, names in the Orient are a nightmare for outsiders.

“My friend’s name is Chunhachiwachaloke,” said a Thai secretary. “His first name is Ekachai. We call him Ek.”

The Thais are a sensible people.

Second Reference Crunch

Getting a name down in the first place is hard enough, even with pencil and paper. The crunch comes on second reference, when not a few foreigners are forced to ask, “So what do I call you?”

In Jakarta, it’s fairly easy, with President Suharto’s Cabinet containing men named simply Harmoko, Hartarto, Subroto and Sudharmono. Just address the letter “Minister of State Sudharmono. . . . Dear Sir:”

But simple as it is, the solitary Indonesian name drives outsiders crazy. Surely, they insist, there must be something else. When Suharto’s predecessor, Sukarno, began making news in the late 1940s, American editors demanded that their reporters dig up his other name.

There never was one, but, under pressure, one correspondent volunteered Achmed. It’s a fairly common name among Indonesians who use more than one, and it stuck. In more than one American newspaper library, old clippings list Indonesia’s independence leader as Achmed Sukarno.

Names in East Asia come from a welter of influences. Some are formal legacies of the widespread Chinese and Islamic cultures; others spring from earlier traditions in the Malay south. Nicknames are popular in all areas; some are born of superstition, some are faintly cruel.

A biography on sale in Seoul reveals that the aloof South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan was known as Spotty as a boy--he had a spot on his arm. Many Thai children start life with nicknames such as Frog or Fatty, the gift of a loving mother who wants to fool the evil spirits into thinking that her child is not worth stealing.

But it is the Filipinos who have raised nicknames to a camp high art. A student need go no further than the family of President Corazon (Cory) Aquino.

Cory was born a Cojuangco, a family whose powerful operatives include her cousin Danding (real name: Eduardo), a political ally of ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos, and her brother Peping (Jose Jr.), the family’s current political boss and husband of Tingting.

Butz and Popsy

The president married into the Aquino family. Her assassinated husband was Ninoy (Benigno Jr.), the older brother of Butz (Agapito), whose wife is called Popsy.

The Cojuangco-Aquino nicknames--which also include a Ballsy, a Jiggy and a Nonoy--make the Philippines’ former First Couple look a bit pedestrian. Marcos carried nothing flashier than Fred and McCoy, while his stylish wife, Imelda, could do no better than Meldy. Their son Ferdinand Jr. was a step up by Filipino standards: His handle is Bongbong.

While the ancestral tree is often paramount in China, Korea and Japan, and the Chinese-influenced cultures of Singapore and Vietnam, family names have less meaning in the Malay cultures of Southeast Asia.

In Thailand, there were no surnames until after the turn of this century, when the nationalistic King Vajiravudh, in part to force assimilation by Chinese immigrants, decided to bring his kingdom up to date. All his subjects, he proclaimed, had to have a surname. When the people clamored for advice, asking the king, elders and Buddhist monks what names to choose, government bureaucrats acted unilaterally.

‘ “Everybody in this district,’ they said, ‘your name will be Suksawat,’ ” related Somnuek Choowichian, director of names registration for the Interior Ministry.

Seventy-five years later, some Thais are still looking for names. Many are Thai-born children of Chinese immigrants, discarding their old Chinese names in favor of a new Thai identity.

One such woman made the change as a teen-ager. “I went to a monk,” she said, “and he suggested five possible names. Eventually, I got my fourth choice.”

The others had been rejected under government regulations that say you cannot take a name that resembles the king’s or other nobility’s, or has an off-color connotation (as many can in the tonal Thai language) or belongs to someone else.

In his Bangkok offices, the registration director pulled open the drawer of a dusty file cabinet. “We computerize next month,” he noted. Inside were cards recording some of Thailand’s 700,000 surnames. New requests are checked against the cards, and matches are rejected. Last year, 7,412 names were approved out of 55,040 requests.

As applicants try to find an unused name, they often add a few extra letters, and the proposals tend to get longer, nearing the legal limit (which cannot be explained in terms of the Roman alphabet). “One sure way to tell a Chinese is by the length of his name,” said an American banker.

Fortunately, in the face of name inflation, Thais from the start never felt any particular attachment to their required surnames, and custom provides that they are known by their first names. For instance, the prime minister, former Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda, is known as Prime Minister Prem or Gen. Prem. The American equivalent would be President Ronald.

In Malaysia, surnames are not a problem. With the exception of the Chinese community, nobody has one. The Muslim Malay majority favors the Arabic usage brought east by Islamic traders.

The prime minister is Mahathir bin Mohammed, meaning Mahathir, son of Mohammed. The head of the national petroleum company is Raja Mohar bin Raja Badi Ozman, the Raja in his name and his father’s being a royal title. On second reference, the prime minister is simply Mahathir, which in fact is his given name (usually chosen from the Koran), not a family name.

Although the Malaysian use of names may be uncomplicated, the names of people of stature are preceded by a long list of honorifics. The English-language Kuala Lumpur Straits Times, for instance, refers to the prime minister as Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohammed. And Mahathir’s honorifics are peanuts compared with one of the Malaysian sultans.

The names of Malaysia’s Indian minority are similar to the Islamic usage, in that there are no family names. Hari S. Maniam, a veteran wire-service reporter based in Kuala Lumpur, is a walking example of the clash of Eastern practice and Western puzzlement when it comes to names.

Maniam’s family came to Malaysia from southern India, where long names were the custom and surnames were not used. He recalled a visit to the home village of his uncle, Hari Venkada Rama Sankara Subramania Iyer, whose mother had prayed for a son at a Hindu temple dedicated to many gods and named the boy after all of them when he was delivered.

“I went around the village asking whether anyone knew the home of Hari Venkada Rama, etc.,” Maniam said. “Nobody knew who I was talking about. Then finally, one guy said: ‘Ah, you mean A, B, C, D Iyer!”’ Even for an Indian, the mother of Maniam’s uncle had overdone it.

Maniam himself started out with reasonably light baggage in the name department. He was, according to Malaysian records, Subramaniam S/O Harihar, the S/O standing for son of. It remains his legal name.

‘Too Damned Long’

But Subramaniam Harihar was too much for his old United Press International editor when the young Malaysian began working for American wire services (He is now the Kuala Lumpur bureau chief for Associated Press.). “It’s too damned long for a byline,” the grizzled American told him. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We keep the Hari from the Harihar. We keep the S from Subramaniam, and we go to Maniam. Hari S. Maniam.”

“The guy liked the idea of the first name Hari,” Maniam recalled. “It reminded him of Truman and he kept saying, ‘Give ‘em hell, Hari.’ ”

Some Western diplomats and journalists in Singapore still refer privately to Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew by the name he adopted in his days as a student at Cambridge University, Harry Lee. But the prime minister and the Chinese majority in Singapore now conform strictly to Chinese practice: family name first. He’s still Mr. Lee but not Mr. Harry Lee.

Being saddled with an unwanted name has never been a problem for the Indonesians. If they don’t like theirs, they change it. Suharto, the president, apparently has kept his through life, but his father took at least four names, a different one each time he married.

A run of bad luck, a failing marriage, illness--change the name and press on; that’s the custom on the main Indonesian island of Java. A headman might also be inspired to give one of his villagers a new name, and it sticks.

In China, as in many other parts of Asia, great emphasis is placed on the meaning of a name bestowed on a newborn baby. Elders and other respected family members are usually consulted and often will deliberate for months. Attention will be paid to how many strokes of a brush are required to write the name in calligraphy; many say nine strokes is luckiest.

In earlier generations, all the children born to one couple often shared, as part of their names, the same Chinese character, so that everyone could tell they were related. But, in an era of one-child families, that, of course, isn’t much of a consideration any more.

In Vietnam, names follow the Chinese pattern of family name first. But second reference follows the Thai pattern of using the given name. The current chairman of Vietnam’s Communist Party is Nguyen Van Linh, or Linh. The former prime minister is Pham Van Dong; family name Pham, given name and second reference Dong.

The Communist leaders of the Vietnam War presented a different problem because they spent so much of their lives behind noms de guerre, on the run from French and Vietnamese authorities. For instance, the man born as Nguyen Sinh Cung in central Vietnam under French rule took a variety of names in his travels through the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union and Southeast Asia.

He was Nguyen Tat Thanh as an assistant pastry cook in London, Guy N’Qqua as a Paris film reviewer, Lou Rosta as a contributor to a Soviet news agency. In 1941, returning to his native Vietnam, he took the name “Bringer of Light,” or Ho Chi Minh. The revolutionary Uncle Ho broke the pattern, becoming known by the first of his three names.

Chinese usage--family name first--generally applies throughout East Asia except where a choice has been made, sometimes involuntarily, to Westernize a name and put the surname last. In Japan, for instance, newspapers refer to the prime minister as Nakasone Yasuhiro. But the Western press long ago turned Japanese names around, and it renders the leader’s name Yasuhiro Nakasone. In either case, Nakasone is the second reference.

It’s normal usage, last-first, in South Korea. What’s abnormal is reflected in the following conversation with the offices of the Government Information Service:

“Is Mr. Kim there?”

“This is Mr. Kim.”

“Fine, I have to change the time on the Olympics appointment.”

“Oh, I’m not that Mr. Kim. You want Mr. Kim S.I.”

“Is he there?”

“I don’t know. You see we have six Mr. Kims here on a staff of 15. Can you leave a message for Mr. Kim?”

“Certainly, Mr. Kim.”

The South Korean government puts out an encyclopedic handbook on Korean affairs, including a who’s who of 190 pages. Forty pages are Kims, 31 are Lees and 14 are Parks.