of asian names (2)

in my earlier post, i have reflected about the construct of asian names. here, i shall talk a little about nicknames. there is this interesting observation i have made about how the different generation of people make use of nicknames. generations of the past used nickname for very practical reasons such as to protect the individuals from harm, in addition to convenience. today, nicknames are used purely for convenience. let me explain further.

during my parents' generation (and probably before that), names are treated with deep reverence and respect as it captures the essence of not just the generation, but also the clan. added to that, the (third) character given to the individual also reflect the wishes and expectations of the parents on their kids and often auspicious sounding. in short, there is something magical about a person's name. take for example, after translation, my mum's name (combination of second and third characters) means "golden girl" (i.e the second character is kim, and the last character is neo). "kim" being the aspirations of my grand parents for her to bring riches to the family and "neo", a commonly used character for girls for peranaken families that means "virtuous girl". to make things interesting, while names given carry auspicious and nice meaning words, there is also a belief that jealous lurking spirits would try to thwart the aspirations by attacking the baby. to prevent the spirits from creating havoc and to mislead the spirits, parents would thus resort to using nicknames that sound bad. using again the example of my mum... she was given the nickname "busuk" (rotten, foul smelling) by her father, my granddad. the story went this way... as a kid, she was prone to sickness. as a result, my granddad brought her to the taoist temple to consult the gods (via the medium). of cos, the advice by the medium was - use a nickname to cheat the evil spirits, thus her name "busuk". and accordingly, my mum's sickness disappeared.

the above is the use of nicknames with a clear purpose of protecting the individual. on top of that, nicknames could also be given out of convenience or simply, fun. such nicknames, when used over an extended period of time, could become the preferred names to address the individual. take for example, my mum and her sisters. according to my mum, my uncles gave them nicknames that reflect their different breast shapes and sizes when they were young (don't ask me why, i could only guess they gave them these nicknames during their teenage years and the nicknames stayed). and so, amongst them, there are tek-pis (flat chested), tek-jang (long breast), and tek-bung (large breast). this was similarly done for me and my brother. during my toddler days, i was nicknamed "tua sar" (big stupid/ idiot) and my brother "suey sar" (small stupid/ idiot) by my nanny/ landlady. this nickname is so significantly different from our actual names (that sounded very patriotic). but i actually find the nicknames very affectionate. haha... these days, the practices of giving convenient nicknames continue, although i would say people are a lot less creative these days (just imagine, the most common names are "baby", "ah boy", and "ah girl").

:-)