What's in a Name

By Degung Santikarma

On first look, the process of maning in Bali seems a rather simple businees. The first child in a family is called Wayan, or Putu if the family is of high caste. The second is called Made, the third Ketut, the fouth Nyoman, and then the cycle repeats. Commoners are given the prefix I for males and Ni for females, while those of the upper castes are given aristocratic titles: Ida Bagus or Ida Ayu, Cokorda or Gusti. A personal name such as Rai or Glebet or Sadra may also be added at the end. It seems all very rational until you meet people called I Made Radio or Anak Agung Putu Carlos Santana.

According to Bali nese tradition, it made little sense to spend hours finding the perfect name for your child since most people switched names several times over a lifetime. Birth-order names and caste titles required little thought, and even so called personal names were rather impersonal and easy. If a mother went into labour in the marketplace, her baby might be called I Made Peken (market). A child with a dented head could be called Ni Wa y an Belek (squishy), and I Nyoman Cengkeh (clove) was perfect for a boy born during the clive harvest. A mother who craved leafy vegetables during pregnancy might call her child I Ketut Kelor (spinach), or Ni Ny oman Suba (enough) if she was fed up with childbearing.

As babies matured into children, their names would be often modified to reflect their characteristic - like Kembung (blister) for a child who would get burned playing with fire, Krebek (thunder) for a child afraid of storms, or Glebet (crash) for a boy who would often fall down. A child plagued by frequent illnesses would be taken to a traditional healer, who would advise the parents to chage the name to confuse evil spirits. And when children grew up to have their own children, they would then be knoown as father of X or mother of X and later grandfather or grandmother of X, giving up their own names for the next generation.