On the 12th of July, 2006, almost all the local newspapers ran the story of the proposed amendments to the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) Act 1959 to give the agency more bite in punishing those who trivialise Article 152 of the Federal Constitution which makes it clear that Malay is the country’s national language.
That this was announced barely a month after the DBP’s 50th anniversary on the 22nd of June, 2006 will surely renew the hopes in many of the so-called “pejuang bahasa” of seeing the Malay language being properly restored to its position as the national language.
In fact, “Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa” (language is the soul of the Nation), a slogan claimed to be originally used by Lembaga Pembangun Sastera Perak (LEPAS) in 1952, has become DBP’s motto ever since its establishment in 1956.
Perhaps, to some observers, nothing is more befitting as the symbolic launching of the DBP’s three-month-long Golden Jubilee celebration than the government’s decision announced on the 20th of June, 2006 by Tan Sri Samsudin Osman, the Chairman of Putrajaya Corporation (Perbadanan Putrajaya) who is also the Chief-Secretary to the Government of Malaysia, to fully change the English names for the various places and streets in the Administrative Center of the Federal Government to Malay ones.
The Perbadanan, as reported by Utusan Malaysia on the 21st of June, 2006, while deciding to change “Boulevard” to “Persiaran Perdana” and “Promenade” to “Persisiran Putrajaya,” had also decided to maintain the word “Presint” as it is now part of the Malay vocabulary and render “Parcel” “Kompleks,” again a word that is originally English. To those who are cynical, such a decision in itself betrays arbitrariness and superficiality.
But to those who are in the least indifferent about language and anything serious about it, the satiric question “Apa ada pada nama?” (What is there in a name?; Do names matter?), seems to be the best expression to betray their feelings concerning what they most probably perceive as a useless attempt to make a fuss of language, the national language included.
However ridiculous such an expression may sound, it is not totally unfounded. YES, names are not everything. BUT they are also not nothing. Indeed, there is a lot more to names and terms than what we ordinarily suppose them to be.
One simply needs to remind oneself that God taught Adam the names of everything (Qur’an, 2: 31). The word for “name” in Arabic is “ism,” a derivative of the root-verb “wasm” or “simah,” meaning “sign” or “mark” that functions to point to something so that it may be found and thus grasped by the searching mind.
Just as the human act of knowing almost always involves man’s recognition of things by their names, so do scientific discoveries almost always end up giving things names that are scientifically befitting.
However, names and naming get to serve evil purposes as much as they do good. How often have we seen names and naming serving imperialistic ends, at least psychologically? Many a perceptive observer has noticed the strong Eurocentric biases in the predominant tendency among Western sciences of naming anything “scientific” with Graeco-Latin terms.
Another good example from our present-day experience of the negative impacts of names and naming is what the Muslims at present are experiencing worldwide as the result of “Islamphobic” labels and the persistent erroneous labels “terrorists,” “extremists,” “suicide bombers” and brands of that ilk.
In fact, to have a proper understanding and appreciation of names and terms, one will have to view them in the light of language as a system that eloquently projects one’s worldview. Not only does language, viewed as such, reflect a person’s mind and philosophy but it in turn also shapes a person’s mind and philosophy.
At a higher plane or within a larger scope, it portrays and records the collective consciousness of a nation. What is this collective consciousness if not the worldview that defines the identity of a nation of which each individual is its necessary contituent?
Insofar as the islamized Malay language as the effective medium of islamizing the worldview of the Malays and thus defining as well as preserving their identity is concerned, one cannot but read the various writings of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas on this subject for convincing historical and intellectual proofs.
His thesis may partly be summarized in the following way: the process involved in islamizing the Malay language and mind is reminiscent of the process of islamizing the Arabic language and mind that started with the first revelation to the Prophet Muhammad.
In the remaining space that we are left with now, let us focus on something else about names and terms which is no less significant. Names, in many respects, are benchmarks and any act of naming is actually an act of benchmarking, regardless of whether one intends it to be so in the first place.
One’s performance and integrity will somehow always be assessed against the name or title one assumes. We easily hear people uttering the derogatory Malay expression “indah khabar dari rupa,” echoing what we may consider to be a crisis of expectation. Similar expressions can also be found in other languages. In English, for instance, we have the expression “not worthy of the name” (also “not worth the name”).
Among the reasons for the Prophet’s instruction to Muslim parents to choose good names for their children, apart from continuously praying for their child every time they call him or her by his or her name, is to set a benchmark for him or her so that he or she may aspire to fulfill the meaning and intention reflected by that name given.
Similarly, when anyone calls himself a “muslim,” he ought to “submit his whole self consciously and willingly to God.” Otherwise, he is simply lying which, based on the famous saying of the Prophet, is the hypostasis of hypocrisy.
A name, as such, is what a person, a thing or an organization is expected to be or to perform, whether or not the person, thing or organization involved really makes it according to expectation. If one ends up hearing the pejorative “Apa ada pada name?” being invoked against oneself, then one should start to stay alert and act accordingly towards a more positive direction. Otherwise, one is simply not worth the name!