Voices from the streets : trends in naming practices of Singapore odonymy

Abstract

Past studies on Singapore toponymy have mainly focused on etymological aspects of individual street names as distinct units, overlooking the relevance of naming practices across different languages. Singapore odonymy is still a largely unexplored field. An investigation into naming strategies in Singapore street names can provide deeper insights not only into the field of Historical Toponomastics, but also shed light on both the history of Toponymy in the local context and among different ethnic groups „en masse‟. This paper explores trends in naming practices in Singapore odonyms belonging to three different languages, namely English, Malay, and Chinese. A randomized sampling of 50 street names from each language was collected and analyzed according to specific naming strategies, highlighting the following categories: descriptive, commemorative, thematic, and borrowing. Results show tendencies towards naming strategies of commemoration and borrowing for English-derived odonyms, descriptive for Malay street names, and a strong preference for commemorative naming for the Chinese-derived ones. Further examination of the odonyms suggests a combination of social, political, and historical-geographical factors underlying these multi-faceted naming processes. This paper aims at being a starting point for a series of studies on the almost unexplored field of Singapore Toponymy, developed through an approach that considers the social and sociolinguistic perspectives besides the conventional historical and etymological methods.