This module has provided me with interesting information about the origins of place names and their meanings. Based on their history, depending on whether there are historical records of the place name, we will either take the diachronic or historical approach of reconstructing the name of the place.
I was especially fascinated by the Abui Lamoling story as discussed in week 7. Lamoling was the original Abui god, friend of Abui people and introduces them to technology. However, he becomes a demon over time with the arrival of Christianity in Alor. Lamoling could have maintained a friendly relationship with the Abui people had Lahatala not arrive as the new god. As Lahatala wants to be the only god of Abui people, this had triggered the jealousy…show more content… The name Sentosa translates as "peace and tranquility" in Malay, which was in turn derived from the Sanskrit term Santosha (संतोष, IAST: Saṃtoṣa), which means "contentment, satisfaction". Sentosa was formerly known as Pulau Blakang Mati which in Malay means the "Island of Death from Behind". The Malay name for this island is literally translated as "dead back" or "behind the dead"; blakang means "at the back" or "behind" or "after"; mati means "dead". It is also called the "dead island" or the "island of the dead" or perhaps "island of after death". The island has gone through several name changes. Up to 1830, it was called Pulau Panjang which literally translates into "long island". The island was referred to as Po. Panjang in an 1828 sketch of Singapore Island. According to Bennett (1834), the name Blakang Mati was only given to the hill on the island by the Malay villagers on the island. Through the 1980s and 1990s, there was a large number of tourist who had to pay to get in to tourist destinations which were built on the island which most of the locals find it uninteresting. Thereafter, there was a joke that the name Sentosa stood for "So Expensive and Nothing to See Also". This can be explained as the backronym or bacronym (inverse acronym), a specially constructed acronym created to fit an existing word, can be a particular case of this kind of…show more content… The majority of the residential housing developments in Singapore are publicly governed and developed. Hence, I have decided to analyse one of the oldest housing estates in Singapore “tiong bahru”
Tiong Bahru is a housing estate located in the Central region of Singapore. It was built in the 1920s, one of the oldest housing estates in Singapore. Tiong Bahru was considered a choice place of living for the upper income class and also the place where the rice and powerful kept their mistresses. Not many people can afford to live in Tiong Bahru estate during the pre-world war 2 years.
Tiong bahru literally means “new cemetery” as (tiong 塚 – Hokkien for cemetery, bahru – Malay for new). The area was filled with cemeteries and they were new as opposed to old cemeteries. The “old cemetery”, literally from Tiong lama, is a combination of Hokkien in the “tiong” (cemetery) and Malay in the “lama (old). Tiong Lama, literally ‘Old Cemetery’, was located at what is now the site of the Singapore General Hospital, in the section bordered by College Road, Hospital Drive and Kampong Bahru Drive, which includes the present Accident and Emergency facilities. The new cemetery was an expansion of the old cemetery which can be seen in Figure