The politics of Arabic naming and islamization in Java: Processes of hybridization and purification

Abstract

Arabic names are a component of a changing Islamic discourse in Java. If Arabic names in Java undergo change and growth, then this has implications for changes in Javanese Islam. This research demonstrates the validity of an approach that uses names as a window into Javanese culture. Drawing on a dataset of 3.7 million names analyzed diachronically across 100 years, and using a quantitative method sharpened by ethnography, the analysis of names offers a new way to investigate trends that were previously often difficult to document systematically. In the past, Javanese names usually reflected social classification: santri, abangan, priyayi, or lower and upper class. However, towards the end of the twentieth century, names with class connotations were increasingly abandoned (see Kuipers and Askuri 2017). In this paper we explore further the connection between the decline of class marked names, and the rise of Arabic names. Drawing on data from Askuri (2018), we argue that although the decline of class marked names precedes the sharp rise in the use of Arabic names, the former does not seem to have caused the latter in a simple way. Our data show that in the 20th century, there were two important stages in the Arabisation of Javanese names; 1) an initial "synthetic" stage of one-word blended Javanese Arab names, popular from roughly 1930-1960; 2) a later stage, beginning in 1980, of 2 and 3 word names, one of which was a purified Arabic name. The conclusions have implications for an understanding of the role of hybridity and purification in Javanese Islamic modernity.