West Sumatra and Minangkabau Names Against Javanization

In this text, Rusmailia Lenggogeni explores how the Minangkabau negotiate identity within a Java-centric Indonesian nation. Through adat, Islam, migration, and especially naming practices—from nature and Arabic to coded, Javanese-sounding forms—Minang names become tools of adaptation, resistance, and survival, affirming the enduring belief that “Minang is change.”

In a country with 1,340 ethnic groups, speaking 718 distinct languages, 6 official religions and many more unrecognized indigenous beliefs, how do you carve an identity that is true to your culture and belief without disrupting the idea of “Indonesia,”—where we’re taught at school that being Indonesian comes first?

The Republic of Indonesia has always been an ambitious project. The idea of uniting different kingdoms and peoples under a republic was first introduced in 1922 by Sutan Ibrahim Malaka, better known as Tan Malaka, an Indonesian Marxist who was part of the Minangkabau ethnic group. During his exile in China, he wrote the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist tome Naar de Republiek Indonesia (Towards the Republic of Indonesia), where he pitched his idea of a new nation state. As a Minangkabau man, Tan Malaka was accustomed to negotiate between adat (traditional customs) and Islam. He understood transformation and forging new identities. Such a process is palpable in the evolution of Minangkabau names. Indeed, our names have been transformed to reveal the connection to land and religion, as well as to survive bloody civil wars, the birth pangs of a new republic and the repression that came afterwards.

The Minang (short for Minangkabau) are an Austronesian ethnic group who inhabited the highlands of central Sumatra (today Indonesia’s second largest and most western main island) and the coastline facing the Indian Ocean. In Minang adat, ancestral properties—home, rice fields etc.—are passed down from mothers to daughters. Men’s role, on the other hand, is to become the family representatives and adat guardians. Because of this role and the fact that men are not custodians of inheritance, they are encouraged to accomplish merantau: to seek knowledge and fortune through travel outside the community. When they return from merantau, men are expected to bring newly found wisdom to the clan.

Before the era of Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in Southeast Asia, typical Minang names
were usually derived from nature, such as Manggih (persimmon) or Karuntuang (woven bag). This is likely from the prevalent indigenous philosophy: “Nature is the teacher.” During the early years of Pagaruyung Kingdom, the only significant Minang kingdom recorded, it is assumed that people adopted Sanskrit names following Adityawarman, its first king and founder. Contact with Muslim traders brought Islam to the land, and eventually, Arabic names such as Burhanuddin, Arifin and Alif became more popular. Islam also brought the Jawi alphabet (an Arab-Malay hybrid) and a network of surau (community mosques that also double as Islamic learning centers). While the ancestral house is a female space in the Minang society, the surau is the male domain.

The first major shift in Minang identity happened in the 19th century. A clash between adat leadership and Minang clerics who just returned from Mecca and wanted to apply Wahabbism led to a civil war. The Dutch saw this as an opportunity to finally invade Sumatra and favored adat leaders. Simultaneously dealing with a costly war in Java, the Dutch couldn’t effectively crush the clerics sooner. Ironically, it gave time for the clerics and adat leadership to realize that the Dutch was their common enemy and both came together. They agreed on a new philosophy: “adat is based on sharia, sharia is based on the Quran”. From then, Islam became an inherent part of the Minang identity. To be Minang is to be Muslim. To renounce Islam means leaving the family, the clan, the tribe. However, the matrilineal line and its inheritance law was still preserved. The Minang never adopted Dutch names even after Dutch colonial rule became official in 1837 as they were considered un-Islamic. In the early 20th century, however, men returning from their merantau tradition not just brought Islamic scholarship but also new ideas from Java, Cairo, the then-Malaya, Europe… Nationalist ideas were discussed in Islamic schools and underground reading groups. Newspapers, including the feminist, women-owned and operated Soenting Melajoe, started cropping up. Questions of identity, like that raised by Tan Malaka, were hotly debated. Students and intellectuals toyed with novel ideas such as combining Islam and Marxism. While still rare, names that are neither classic Minang or Arabic names started to appear. For instance, one of my friends’ father was given the name Jurnalis by his parents, because journalists were highly regarded in society, while his brother was named Roosevelt after the US president Theodore Roosevelt.

When the Republic of Indonesia finally came to fruition in 1945 and the European occupiers left for good in 1949, the Minang had to grapple with something new: the Indonesian state and a newly forged national identity.

The Minang homeland was now called “Central Sumatra province.” Increasingly dismayed at the economic inequality between their home province and that of Java, which received the bulk of government funding in spite of their significantly lesser economic contribution compared to Sumatra, grumbles for federalism emerged. Before the Republic, Minang society had already enjoyed almost 600 years of relative democracy and autonomy, even under Pagaruyung and the occupation. Power in Pagaruyung was never centralized in one person, it was shared by a trinity of leaders that each specialized in daily kingdom dealings, adat, and religion matters. This was then carried through to smaller, self-contained, territorial political units that still exist and function today. Ceremonial titles were awarded through consensus—never inherited. Thus, the Minang felt they could build the province on their own terms.

While Java had always been the most populous island, up until then, the Minang had always had an overwhelming presence in the political landscape—especially prominent during the independence movement, with leadership in all political parties and strategic positions in the first few governments. The most prominent of them all was Muhammad Hatta, one half of the founding fathers. When Hatta resigned a year after the Republic’s first election to protest against government corruption and Sukarno’s increasing authoritarianism, it left the president without a non-Javanese equal and without a partner—the vice-presidency was left empty until Sukarno fell. Revolt in Sumatra broke out in 1958 after a decentralization ultimatum deadline came and went unheeded by Jakarta. The repression from Jakarta was swift and deadly. The (probably underestimated) official state death toll was 10,159 people over the course of slightly over three years.

To weaken the Minang, Jakarta split Central Sumatra into three provinces: West Sumatra, Riau, and Jambi.

Similarly, the two Minang political parties, Masyumi (Islamic) and PSI (Socialist) were disbanded for their alleged involvement in the rebellion. The Javanese minority, descendants of laborers settled in Sumatra by the Dutch, grew in numbers after many more were planted by the central government to make sure the “rebellious, unruly” Minang fell in line with Jakarta. According to the US embassy report at the time, almost all important positions in the provincial government, military and police were filled by the Javanese.

This war created the first and biggest exodus in Minang history. Hundreds of thousands of Minang men fled the province to Java. My father was one of them. He recounted the trauma of having to go on the run for years, finally landing in Jakarta and changing schools numerous times to evade capture. One of his friends was picked up by soldiers during class in Jakarta, giving him recurring nightmares of this time well into his adult life. By then, the Minang, beaten, traumatised, and ego-battered, became the “defeated people.”

Constantly hunted down, humiliated at checkpoints, the Minang started employing a new survival tool: children born in the middle of the fierce fighting and its aftermath were given Javanese names to cheat death, avoid harassment, gain access to government schools and positions, adapt to their new reality and surroundings, as well as to avoid being seen as “dissenters.” For instance, my elderly neighbor was given the name Suhirwan by his parents so “one day he could become a boss in Java.” He did. A man I met in a Minang restaurant told me that his father was given the name Suhardi by his farmer parents, so that he could become a soldier one day. He did. The owner of the restaurant, Nilawati, was born in Padang in 1977. We called her mother from the restaurant, and she said it was a trend at the time. Nilawati concurred, most of her schoolmates had names that end with –wati, a common Javanese name, derived from the Sanskrit vati.

But a lot of these names, while sounding Javanese to Indonesian ears, are actually codes. It’s the Minang way to adapt while still having connection to their roots, their Minang-ness. Minang people have long used rhymes, verses and poetry to teach adat and wisdom—a good wordplay is always celebrated. As we reinvented our identity, we invented names from scratch, using acronyms and abbreviations to tell our stories, sometimes infused with humor. Ruskandar, a Minang fan of Latin American cinema (during the Sukarno years, foreign arts were limited to left-leaning countries), legally changed his name to Rioskandar Martino before he applied for military school in 1965. He switched Rus to “Rios,” and Martino is a combination of his parents’ two names. He named his firstborn daughter and my friend, Ricci Vicika, a mishmash of his and his wife’s names.

By the time Suharto came into power in 1967, he increasingly tightened Java’s grip over the nation.

Not only was bureaucracy centralized in Java, but Javanese culture, imagery, and philosophy became the national default even in places with very distinct cultural differences such as Kalimantan and occupied East Timor.

Religious freedom was suppressed and discussions of identity through religion, ethnic group and race were considered taboo. Outwardly Islamic symbols were stifled. Western music and films, once banned under Sukarno, started to flow back into the country and with them, names such as Ivan, Elvis, Betsy became commonplace. But the “coded name” trend continued to be the strongest trend among Minang names. Some may even say that it got out of hand as names kept getting more and more unusual. Faldo Maldini, a Minang politician, revealed that his name was an abbreviation of “World Cup Final At Rome In The Middle of The Night” in Indonesian, because he was born right when West Germany was playing Argentina in the World Cup finals in, you guessed it, Rome.

The fall of Suharto in 1998 ushered in the long-awaited decentralization, and West Sumatra experienced an intense revival of Islam. This led to the overwhelming return to Arabic names, in line with the Islam-influenced belief that a good name carries blessings and becomes a lifelong prayer. Names such as Hawaary Rayyan Aafiya and Abbyan Zianka Albarra were chosen after poring over Arabic baby name books. While regional autonomy brought some wealth, West Sumatra’s economic output is noticeably smaller than the other two former Central Sumatra provinces. The recent catastrophic flooding, of which West Sumatra is one of the worst affected provinces, will definitely scupper any existing developmental plans. The state’s slow response and the stubborn refusal of the president—a descendant of Javanese nobility on his father’s side who has been pushing to again centralize power—to declare it a national disaster, is sowing discontent on Jakarta’s authority once more. “Is this because we’re not Java?” “Sumatra’s natural resources are the state’s but our disaster is our own, apparently.”

In this Muslim-majority country—where the two only things that are considered haram are a pig and a coup—representatives from neighboring Aceh and North Sumatra have already uttered that forbidden word “separate.” While West Sumatra has stayed quiet on this front (for now), will there be another major shift in the works?

“Minang is change,” said Minang historian Gusti Asnan in an interview. That’s what merantau culture teaches the Minang: to explore new ideas, to adapt, or otherwise be left behind and worse, wither away. Our names follow. ■