Naming and Collective Memory in the Malay Muslim World

Abstract

The study is based on three principal sets of data: subscriber names in telephone directories, historical genealogies of royal families, and genealogies of contemporary, ordinary Muslims in the Malay Muslim world. These data sets on naming enable us to explore the concept of collective memory, and to explain differential tensions between absolutist Islamic symbolism and symbolic aspects of local cultures. Naming has been examined in the anthropological literature in relation to genealogy, landscaping, and identity formation. There have been few comparative studies, and this paper takes this approach, focusing on the collective memory of the Islamic solidarity as expressed through use of the names of Allah, Prophet Muhammed, and the great Imams. We find that historically Malay Muslims have tended to adopt Islamic names, particularly from name clusters around these three categories of names. Javanese Muslims, by contrast, have adopted Islamic names inconsistently. The collective memory has been constantly reinterpreted in local cultures, as indicated in the substantial use by Muslims of non-Islamic names and titles. Structural amnesia and capitalist influences may explain both general and differential reconstructions of the Islamic collective memory. The study also finds that the Malay and Javanese Muslims do not normally commemorate their ancestors through the succession of names within the lineage.