Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Naming a child is always very difficult. It is excruciatingly difficult if you have a mixed marriage with different languages and cultures to appease! My family is mixed Australian/Indonesian living in Sydney, and it’s always difficult to name a child with a name that doesn’t get eyebrows raised in each culture. After all, you don’t want the kids to be teased at school, or to have no-one able to pronounce it.
When my firstborn emerged, I was so ready! I had laboriously collated a long list of names for either a boy or a girl, as the sex was going to be a surprise. I decided that Indonesian names were what we wanted, and as my husband came from Java we decided to go for old Javanese names with Sanskrit origins. I needed a long list, for after the birth my mother-in-law, Grandma Siti, would then be able to choose the name from the list that fitted perfectly to the Javanese numerology of the birth-day. This is the combination of the numbers from the 7 day European week with the 5 day Javanese week that the birthdate falls on, and its congruence with the numbers from the letters in the name itself! Fortunately Grandma Siti was staying with me for the birth, and she knew how to calculate all this stuff!
As well as helping out with her new grandkids, Grandma Siti performed all the proper rituals after the birth as well. The Javanese are Muslim, but many of their rituals come from Hindu/Buddhist traditions – from the deep layers of their ancient culture. After a child is born the husband brings the placenta home to be buried in the garden with objects placed within it, to ensure calmness for the baby and good attributes. For example, a sewing needle for good health, some rice for good luck and wealth, a pencil & paper for study aptitude and a prayer written on paper to encourage good character.
And that is how my firstborn got named Kartini, meaning serenity. It was also the same name as Princess Kartini of Jepara, the famous first feminist of Java, which I was doubly happy about! It suited her admirably from day one – she didn’t even cry when she came out, but opened her eyes and looked at each of us present, one by one.
When it was time for my secondborn, I was so tired and busy I didn’t have any time to put together a long list of names for either sex before the birth! After all, why not wait until we found out which sex it was first, so I could halve the time spent on the name list? I did bring an Old Javanese dictionary to read through while in the hospital, with a vague hope of getting a list together to bring home with me and the baby. And so my second daughter was born without a list! I tried to go through the dictionary while breastfeeding the newborn, but didn’t manage to get very far. There was one name I came across that I liked: Kartika, meaning star. I didn’t write it down or mention it to anyone, I just made a mental note that when I got home from hospital I would start my list off with this name…
When my husband drove the baby and I home from hospital, in the car I told him I hadn’t put together a name list yet. He threw me a sheepish look. He then told me that his mother had already buried the placenta with the new baby’s name in it! I couldn’t believe it! I started to fume with disappointment and even anger. My voice was getting shriller and shriller as I asked him why on earth his mother had chosen a name without consulting me and him, the baby’s parents! It was not the custom in Java for the grandmother to choose the name without consulting the parents, I exclaimed! What if she had chosen an awful name that meant our baby would get bullied at school, something like say Fatmawati? I could hear the school ground chorus of “Fatty Fatty, Whatty is a Fatty!” ringing in my ears already…
After a long anguished pause, I asked him with great trepidation:
“So what name did she bury with the placenta?”
“Kartika”, he said.
I shut up and rode in silence all the way home.