Naming Us Is Not Easy Either!

Do you know the fact that you are the number one for everyone in our family? You are the first granddaughter to my parents; you are the first niece to my brothers and sister; you are the first cucu saudara to all my uncles and aunties; and of course you are our very first baby to Bapak and me. And that creates one little problem for all of us, the naming game is of course not as easy as an ABC.

Bapak and I had a little problem of naming ourselves. Bapak had a problem to choose Bapak, Daddy, Ayah or either Papa. But finally he chose Bapak for you to address him soon. As for me, I don’t really have problem of choosing my name since I will definitely address myself as Che because I found it is quite unique in this “Momma’s Era”. But of course your Bapak didn’t allow me since it sounds too Kok Lanas. So I leave it to him to find me the name and finally he chose Mummy. I think it is very important for you to have a balance ideology once you grew up, which mixes the kampong and modern ideology.

Naming game also gives my parents a headache, especially to your grandmother. She found herself cute in ‘Nek Ma’ so I just agreed it. And she has named your grandfather Tok Ba to suit hers. Prior to that, all of your nenek saudara have put ‘Nek’ in front of their names. So now you have Nek Mi, two Nek Sue, Nek Ngah, Nek Id and Nek Chik. And ‘Tok’ for datuk saudara. And you have your own Tok Za, Tok D, two Tok Sue, Tok Ngah and Tok Lik. Oh what a name!

And now the problem goes to my brothers and sister. My sister, your only auntie has made up with a great idea which she combined the word Auntie and her name; and it becomes Anya – the combination of Auntie and Nadia. But for your two uncles, they still didn’t make up with any names so we decided to name them Tok Wan and Pak Su Pa (oh, I can’t stop laughing seriously).

Since your Anya has made up with a unique name, so did all of my cousins. They named them as Antiq, Anyon, Anlia, Anyong, Antiah, Ansasha, Anma, Anmimi, Anaina, Anfifi and the list goes on… For my cousins under age 10, I leave it to them to name themselves once they grew up and know the meaning of family tree. And they are Izyan Farhah (10), Mariam Yasmin (7), Iklil Silmi (8), Farah Amina (8), Izkhan Maula (7), and Aliff Haikal (10).

Thank God you are number eight in Bapak’s family. So that Pak Long Din, Pak Ngah Min, Mak Njang Dad and Mak Lang Anis and also your only Tok Kedah didn’t have any problem playing this naming game.

The naming game is already over, and now everybody is waiting for our little Iris to speak out our names out loud!