Malay surnames are used by the people of Malaysia and other regions which have experienced extensive Malay migration in parts of Asia and Africa. In its early history, the Malay Peninsula and adjoining regions were dominated by a range of Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms.
However, the region does not follow naming practices that one would find in India and other Hindu or Buddhist regions today. Rather, its surname heritage is primarily influenced by the fact that the Malay Peninsula was conquered and colonized by Islamic explorers from the west beginning in the fourteenth century.
As a result, Malay surnames are primarily influenced by Muslim and Arabic naming practices and tend to be patronymic exclusively.[1]
The Malaccan Empire and Aceh Sultanate in the early modern period (c. 1500–1700), which acted as the primary powers for the spread of Islam, and with it Islamic surname practices across the Malay Peninsula and the East Indies.
Malay surnames are a product of the more recent history of the Malay Peninsula and the surrounding regions such as southern Thailand, and the islands of Sumatra and Java which have been traditionally inhabited by people of Malay descent. There has been human settlement here for 40,000 years at least. The Malay people became dominant on the Peninsula in the course of the first millennium CE. During this period the cultures and polities predominant across the region were either Buddhist or more often Hindu, having been greatly influenced by contact with Indian culture. Despite the lengthy period in which Buddhist and Hindu culture prevailed across the region, they have left very little impact on surnames and naming practices amongst the Malay people today.[2]
The Silk Roads extended from China and Southeast Asia through India and Transoxiana to the Middle East and Europe.
Instead, naming practices in Malaysia and adjoining regions are overwhelmingly Islamic today. In the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as the vast trade networks known as the Silk Roads expanded, Islamic explorers and would-be conquerors began arriving on the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Sumatra and Java. By the fifteenth century they had established a number of powerful Islamic sultanates, which came to dominate the region politically and socially. As they did, naming practices were Islamicized amongst the Malay people.[3]
There are no surnames to speak of within the Islamic system which was adopted amongst the Malay. Instead, patronymics which indicate who the person is directly descended from are used. In this system, patronymics effectively mean ‘son of’ or ‘daughter of’ and then give the name of the person’s father. Thus, Yusof bin Abdullah means ‘Yusof son of Abdullah’ and so on and so forth. This is not an entirely unfamiliar system in terms of western surnames. After all, surnames which begin with ‘von’ or ‘van’ in Germany or the Netherlands today are fossilized versions of ‘son of’ in those languages, as is a name like ‘Fitzpatrick’ in English, with ‘Fitz’ being an Anglo-Norman term for ‘son of’. However, where western societies dropped the use of a patronymic and began using standardised surnames in the late medieval period, this practice has never been abandoned in Islamic countries. The most common patronymics in Malay culture and in Malaysia today are ‘bin’ and ‘binti’ meaning ‘son of’ and ‘daughter of’. The use of these is even regulated in Malaysia through the National Registration Department Order of 2009.[4]
As noted, Malay naming practices do not include surnames, but rather a patronymic to indicate the line of descent from one’s father, or in a more extended form, grandfather and other ancestors. The most common patronymics so used are as follows:
bin – Meaning ‘son of’. For instance, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates from May 2022 onwards is so named as his father was Zayed bin Sultan Al Mahyan.
binthi – Meaning ‘daughter of’. An example is Siti binti Saad, a pioneering musician of the taarab genre whose father was Saadi.[5]
ibn – Another form of ‘son of’.
ibnat – Another form of ‘daughter of’.
nasab – Less common, but nasab may be used as a broader term to indicate descent from.
amir – This is effectively a word for 'prince', ‘ruler’ or ‘commander’, though sometimes it will occur in contexts where the individual’s father was a ruler of some kind as part of a surname.[6]
Most common Malay surnames
There are no surnames to speak of in Malay tradition, just patronymics as outlined above, but a wide range of surnames have been introduced into the Malaysia region by other cultures. Some of the more common are as follows:
Tan – This is the most common of Malay surnames, although the origins of it ultimately lie in China where it emerged as a means of indicating one's origin in the state of Tan.
Ahmad – This is a common surname in Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia, one which is of Arab and Muslim origin, transliterating as 'one who thanks god' or 'praiseworthy'.
Khan – This is a surname which is widely found in Malaysia and is of Indian Muslim derivation. It means 'prince', 'chief' or 'ruler'.[7]
Geographical spread of Malay surnames
Within Malaysia and other countries on the western side of the East Indies such as Indonesia and Brunei that Malay people are native to, there is really no geographical distinction to speak of. You will find people carrying the ‘bin’ and ‘binthi’ patronymics everywhere you go. Where some geographical variation is to be found it relates to the Malay diaspora, which is significant and has resulted in Malay names being carried around the world.
The heart of the Malay diaspora is unquestionably the Philippines where it is estimated that as many as two million people are of Malay descent of some kind. There is also a very large Malay diaspora community in South Africa known as Cape Malays. There are a quarter of a million Cape Malays, a great many of which are the descendants of people who were forcibly brought to the Dutch Cape Colony in the eighteenth century as slaves from the Dutch Republic’s other colonies in the East Indies. There are some 50,000 Malays in Sri Lanka, a similar number in the United Kingdom and upwards of 95,000 Malays living in the United States. Thus, Malay patronymics are common in a wide range of other countries outside of Southeast Asia.[8]
Famous people with Malay surnames
Tunku Abdul Rahman ibni Almarhum Sultan Abdul HamidMazlan binthi Othman – A Malaysian astrophysicist who has pioneered Malaysian activity in space. She became the first woman to achieve a PhD in physics from the University of Malaysia in 1981 and subsequently went on to acquire numerous senior positions in space exploration with the United Nations and other bodies. Her patronymic means ‘daughter of Othman’.[9]
Mohd Faiz bin Subri – A Malaysian professional footballer who plays in the Malaysian Super League. Bin Subri, whose patronymic here means ‘son of Subri’, is best known for winning the 2016 FIFA Puskás Award for the best goal scored anywhere in the world that year.[10]Norman bin Musa – A Malaysian born celebrity chef, restaurateur and entrepreneur whose patronymic simply means ‘son of Musa’. Bin Musa owns restaurants across numerous countries, notably in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.[11]
Tunku Abdul Rahman ibni Almarhum Sultan Abdul Hamid – The first Prime Minister of Malaysia following the granting of independence from Britain in 1957. He filled that role until 1970. His patronymic effectively means ‘son of Sultan Abdul Hamid’.
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