no surname?

This might be new for you whose countries always require their citizens to name their children with “two words” names or “one first name with surname”. But Indonesia, might be one unique country that doesn’t require the parents to give surname to their children. I don’t know about other countries, but … surnames have always been headache triggers for some certain people or nations.

Quoted from www.theage.com.au:

Record keeping is a mess in Indonesia in the best of times. There’s little computerisation. Even when there is, there’s often basic confusion about how to record people’s names. There’s no standard system of names across Indonesia. Many Indonesians have just one name and no surname. Many have aliases.

Many, might be an understatement. Half population of Indonesians might be giving you a better description of how messed the naming by the parents back then. Okay, some Indonesian who have surnames might protest me right now. But don’t forget, those people have already had this naming convention from their forefathers, like those with surnames have from their forefathers too. There are, of course, half others that do have surnames because their (clans / tribes) forefathers passed to them time by time, generation by generation.

And another quote, from en.allexperts.com:

Honestly, I’ve never heard this used as a first name anywhere in Indonesia, and I’ve heard some very confusing ones in my time here. In addition, people here can have several given names but no surname. Then again, some have both.

True. You can have name like “Mario Ananda” aka “Ahai” aka “Boy” here, or any full name like “Sekar Dewi”, or “Sarah Ayu Sari” (all of them are combination of first names or first name and middle name, given names, still without any surname), or you can even have, for example, “Dono Sukamto Ignanto” as your full name (Sukamto and Ignanto are both surnames, might be a combination of both parents’ surnames), as long as it was how your parents named you.

Some Indonesian people might protest the claiming about “many” Indonesian people without surname, they might tell you otherwise. But how they had come to this conclusion, I would try to explain it later, I will continue talking about their experiences first.

I heard so many times about those people (with no surname) getting trouble in International bureaucracy, on the other hand, bureaucracy in Indonesia doesn’t require parents giving surname to their children. Moreover if the parents themselves don’t have surname, what surname they should give to their children? But somehow, this is totally a mess, indeed, because when these people have to go abroad, the passport would require on having surnames or mostly they would not be able to apply for a passport. Sad but it was true. I don’t know about current situation for the passport applying, but many friends in Indonesia who once had no surname, later could go study abroad. How they finally did it? Maybe they got their name changed legally. I don’t know. I will ask my friends about it one day.

Anyway, from the discussion of these people in “Sarapan Ekonomi” blog, the newer regulations practically banned single name. According to one visitor of the blog, in most places in Indonesia (at least big cities) you can’t have a single name when you register your baby names. Also when you want to apply for new passport (this happened to a colleague of the blog visitor), so then many MUST change to have two names - at least a family names.

Hmm, okay, that explains a lot about how the phone books are getting more “more than single word” named people nowadays. Anyway, that’s another story.

So how come there have been those being born without being given any surname? Some writers might have been implying that these Indonesian people are not well educated but this is a very subjective point of view, and I need to stress the point that this case has no relation with any educational level. Indonesia is a multicultural country, and talking about multicultural, there are patrilineal (some tribes like Batak, Chinese), matrilineal (like Padang) do have family name, but there are also a lot of tribes that are neither patrilineal nor matrilineal (to tell you the truth, some Chinese-Indonesian are also part of this category), and mostly these ones didn’t attach their family names into their formal names.

And don’t assume that only Indonesian have this exceptional case. Take a look at this one:

“The use of family names varies among cultures. In particular, Icelanders, Tibetans, Burmese, and Javanese often do not use a family name.”
(from Wikipedia)

Please don’t mistake Javanese for Japanese. Javanese are the tribes in Java island, Indonesia. And Japanese, you know them, the people from Japan.

By the way, I was told by a Japanese e-pal back then, every Japanese citizen must have surname, even the abandoned babies would be given a common surname by the local administrative officers once they were found and delivered to any orphanage. However, their emperor and the whole members of the Japanese royalty have no surname.

Interesting.

One more confirmation here:

“The crown prince of Japan has no surname, nor does the emperor of the country. Royalty in Japan do not have surnames, but are differentiated in name from their predecessors entirely by their given names.”

Wikipedia has also stated:

The Japanese emperor and his families have no surname for historical reasons, only a given name such as Hirohito (??), which is rarely used in Japan: Japanese prefer to say “the Emperor” or “the Crown Prince”, out of respect and as a measure of politeness.

Anyway, what had also caught my interest about “having no surname” lately, was that one man out there even decided on his own to change his name into one word name, and became a sensation in his country:

http://yhwh.com/namechange.htm

http://yhwh.com/Gallery/NameLegal.htm

http://yhwh.com/DaveRossArticle.htm

and I don’t know if this man would have any difficulties in applying for the passport. I just found his page from another friend, now this is getting interesting when we are going back to talk about … joining any company program or affiliation … what I mean are the International ones.

Mostly the get paid programs or affiliations will require you to enter “last name” column in sign up page. For those people who don’t have surname, moreover when their name even only consists of one word name, this would get them into trouble.

For what entry they would have to put into the “last name” column? The dash (-) character? Now, this is getting serious when we are facing those person(s) in charge of the affiliations. For example like the PTR / PTC programs, for those of you who have ever participated in these kinds of get paid programs, you might remember their terms of not providing false personal information when you are joining their programs, or your account would be suspended without notice.

And for some “no surname” fellows, the dash (-) entry is surely unacceptable for the owners of these programs. If you can read or understand Indonesian language, in the forums or blog entries out there, you might ever find some complaining by Indonesian participants of these programs, who were … unfortunately, suspended from their International get paid programs because the PTR / PTC or any programs’ owners didn’t accept their explanation of “having no surname”. In fact, they entered ‘-’ character in the “last name” column in the profile information page, because they had no surname and their “last name” blank entry would be rejected when they signed up. But many of these “get paid programs” owners misunderstood them, and labeled them “giving false personal information”, and then decided to terminate these people’s participation in their programs.

Sounds awful and unfair huh? But that’s what happened to these people back then. Sure, it was not their fault to have “no surname”. Moreover, these people never thought of this case as out of ordinary, because these “having no surname” situations have been passed from generation to generation, if we are talking about the country Indonesia. Again, I need to stress the point that “giving children no surname” has no relation with any educational level.

And back to the suspension of these people’s participation in PTR / PTC; the PTR / PTC termination of their participation was just a small example of their experiences. Talking about applying for a passport, or dealing with International documentation, studying abroad, the bureaucracy which urges people having surname in many kind of official processing, I just can’t imagine how they have been through. Some would blame their own parents, but again, who can blame whom? That’s why those who learned these painful experiences urged the new parents to add “second word” first name when they named their children, so their children would have “second word” after their “first word” name.

Confused?

So, one day if you find any Indonesian whose name is more than one word, it doesn’t mean that the last name is surely their surname, it is probably still their first name, but they have two words first name.

One might also have more than two words name, for example “Raden Roro Ayu Sekar Dyah Chantika” … For your information, “Raden Roro” is a title for young lady from a certain royal line in Java island, but don’t assume that Chantika is her surname. All those words contain no surname. Surprised? Yeah, you might want to know better about their names usage then, just do some searching on Google and you’ll find more fascinating information about this nation’s people’s names.

Okay, so for those of you who have no surname, how to anticipate the situation like those participants of PTR / PTC programs who had ever been suspended because of the last name case? If you have already been suspended, and if it is still a short time after the suspension, I would suggest you to contact the owner of the programs and to give proofs of your single name, whatever you can use as a proof for them. Let them know that you are one of the proofs of those who were not given any surname by their parents. The owners of the programs might be asking your passport, but since you have no passport, tell them about it and you can ask them whether you can provide your current valid identity as a proof. Give explanation, just try to still be polite, don’t get emotional, I know having no surname often hurts for some of you but there are a lot of people out there just don’t get it, they might never know that such things exist. Anyway, don’t blame your parents, but let them learn about your experience for having no surname.

And for those who have not join any programs or business affiliation, but want to, my suggestion would be: Before signing up, contact the company of the programs / affiliations! Ask them about the procedure of signing up for those who do not have surname. I heard from some friends back then, that one of their friend (without surname) was misunderstood by Google adsense team when he signed up without giving surname entry. But later, Google team finally accepted his explanation and proof, and maybe there were also similar case with Indonesian adsense publishers-to-be back then, I heard that Google finally decided to merge the “first name” and “last name” columns as one “full name” column in their sign up page.

That’s what I heard from the Indonesian friends. I have never joined Google adsense program till today (January 9, 2008), so I wouldn’t know.

Finally, to satisfy your curiosity … if people are looking for someone whose name is only one word, just take one example … “Annie”? How would the people know that she is the “Annie” they are looking for?

If this “Annie” came from specific ethnic in Indonesia, for example … Chinese-Indonesian. Those who would seek her would just mention:

• “I’m looking for Annie whose Chinese name is ….” or
• “I’m looking for Annie whose father’s name is …” or
• “I’m looking for Annie who is usually called by the name ….” or
• “Oh … Annie. She is around … years old”, or
• “She is from class A, her friends and teachers usually call her … (then mention the nickname addressed to her by them)”, or
• the most obvious description: “She wears glasses, has ponytails, the skinny.”

Anything they can mention to help people find out which one they are looking for.

Last word for today:

for the parents and parents-to-be who also have similar case in their countries:
to avoid facing similar difficulties, next time, give your children surname or ’second word’ name when you are giving birth to them. Don’t let this painful experience come to your children. Learn from the others’ experiences. Again, we are not talking about who is guilty or not, we are talking about anticipation for your children towards any complicated bureaucracy.

Hope this article means something for you all. Have a good day!

PS: This article and the mentioning of some names are not intended to bring any disrespect towards those mentioned above. The reason I wrote this article was because I found so many “single name” people had been misunderstood by those who have never heard of “having no surname”. It wasn’t their fault for having no surname, by the way. I guess it’s needless to blame any parents, their parents have also learned it the harsh way. And so did my parents.